It’s here. I’ll let the images speak for themselves. You can easily see where the problem areas are likely to start.
Tag Archives: Coronavirus
Good news!
One of the benefits of actually looking at the data and not relying on the media is that questions start forming when patterns emerge without some of the biases that could be formed due to the bombardment of the sensationalism that can be found in media outlets, no matter their political leaning.
I had been puzzled by why there seemed to be difference case fatality rates in different countries.
Here’s the current data for South Korea. The CFR there is about 0.5%.
Compare that to Iran and Italy, where the CFRs are a little above 3%. The obvious question is “why the difference?”
I had a hunch based on my very early assumptions about mild and asymptomatic disease. That led me to wonder if the differences might have to do with testing. Once I did a media search, I found my answer.
“South Korea has the second-largest national caseload of coronavirus, and has tested far more than most nations. As of Monday, South Korea had tested a total of 105,379 people…Italy has the most cases in Europe with 1,694 as of Monday. Italy has carried out more than 23,300 tests.” Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much data from Iran, but they are preparing to test “tens of thousands.”
I have suspected since early on that the CFR was artificially high. This is some solid evidence that assumption was right. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. This is how information from the media should be used.
Share this:
Medical Supplies
If you are purchasing masks and gloves, you are endangering the lives of others who are or will be on the front lines. When coronavirus becomes active in your area, use the other methods that will help like social distancing, respiratory hygiene, and frequent handwashing/hand sanitizing.
The WHO has already indicated that there is a global shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE). Please don’t contribute to this problem.
Other shortages are likely to follow. According to Mike Ryan, MD, during a WHO briefing today, there are concerns that Iran will not have enough ventilators to meet the expected demand. This isn’t just a problem there. It could be similar in the US as this disease becomes endemic here. In 2017, Huang et. al. suggested “Substantial concern exists that intensive care units (ICUs) might have insufficient resources to treat all persons requiring ventilator support. Prior studies argue that current capacities are insufficient to handle even moderately severe pandemics.”
So please, leave the masks and gloves alone. Things could get challenging enough without the actions of the public making care delivery even harder.
Share this:
Oops…correction.
I made a technical mistake in the description of the combined 3D graph of the disease in the various countries. The graph represents the cumulative cases over time, not the new cases (incidence) each day. I had used one of my other country graphs as a template and forgot to change the language. Here’s a corrected version with one more day of data.
I’ve also been contemplating the weird pattern in incidence in the US prior to the last few days. I wonder if those might represent individuals who were abroad (the cruise ships for instance) and were counted as US cases. I honestly don’t know. Someone might be able to figure all that out but that’s just not worth the effort to me currently.
I’m finding a few other things of note in the recently published medical literature as well as I wind down for the evening.
I have often expressed how the case fatality rate (CFR) is likely to go down assuming that there are a number of cases that haven’t been counted because of the increase in the size of the denominator. Battegay et. al. argued that the CFRs might be overestimated or underestimated in different parts of the world.
I was also pleased to come across data in a single publication by Jieliang Chen describing both the CFR and the R0 (reproduction rate) for other diseases. This saved me some time hunting down something for each of them individually. It’s a good comparison and also supports why I was talking about those variables early on.
| Virus | Case Fatality Rate (%) | R0 |
|---|---|---|
| 2019-nCoV | 3 | 1.4–5.5a |
| SARS-CoV | 10 | 2–5 |
| MERS-CoV | 40 | <1 |
| Avian H7N9 (2013) | 40 | <1 |
| H1N1 (2009) | 0.03 | 1.2–1.6 |
| H1N1 (1918) | 3 | 1.4–3.8 |
| Measles Virus | 0.3 | 12–18 |
| Rhinovirus | <0.01 | 6 |
| Ebola Virus | 70 | 1.5–2.5 |
| HIV | 80b | 2–4 |
| Small Pox Virus | 17 | 5–7 |
Share this:
Hope from China
China still puzzles me a bit. Part of that stems from how much trust can be placed in the data.
First, the case fatality rate appears to be above 3%. I’m hoping that is a function of inadequate data on the burden of disease on those with mild or asymptomatic infection. We simply do not know. However, if there is a large cohort that has gone undetected, then things will be much better than they appear, exactly what I had been alluding to when I early was first writing about this virus.
Second, it’s a great sign that the incident cases are dropping. The question though is whether this is due to any aggressive social measures by the government, inadequate means for testing, or other factors that are difficult to determine from only having the perspective of data, not boots on the ground observation.
In summary though, I want to reemphasize that this is not a particularly good model for disease in the west due to the reasons I wrote about earlier.
