Why the United States and Europe might fare much worse than China against the Coronavirus...
Three visualizations make it evident
March 17th, 2020. At midnight today, a shelter-in-place order took effect in San Francisco, where I live. Similar orders are being put in place in cities and states across Europe and America. So, what’s next? We wait and watch over the next few weeks as the numbers trickle in. Were the measures put into place enough to “flatten the curve”, or did we act a bit too late?
The Chinese Response
After their initial state of denial, the Chinese government’s response to the epidemic was swift and draconian. Hubei province was placed on complete lockdown, the likes of which is unimaginable here in America. All public and private transportation in and out of Hubei was cut off, so no one could enter or leave the province. This totalitarian step seems to have had a drastic effect on containing the infection.
We can track the spread of the infection in China starting Jan 25th, 2020, the date that the Hubei lockdown started taking effect to date in the visualization below. While many of the surrounding provinces are already infected, the Hubei lockdown helps flatten their growth rate substantially. Hubei province alone continues to escalate on an exponential trajectory. Two months later, only four provinces neighboring Hubei (Guangdong, Henan, Zhejiang, and Hunan) have more than a thousand confirmed cases. Huge crowded cities like Beijing and Guangzhou that are outside the epicenter only saw isolated incidents that tallied up to a few hundred. In a country of 1.4 billion, the spread of the infection was localized and contained, mostly because of the extreme measures.
Apart from severely restricted movement, a “grid-based” management system that employed millions of workers was put in place to enforce these restrictions and test citizens extensively. Apartment complexes had a strict token-based restriction on how many times residents could step outside. An underground Mahjong parlor that hosted 15 people was destroyed. Fever clinics and quarantine hotels were built to isolate Covid-19 patients from the rest of the hospital system.
Now, some 50 days later, these draconian measures seem to have succeeded. New infection rates have dropped down to a trickle, and China is considering resuming normal life soon.
The European and American Response
Even though there were ample warning signs over the last few months, the epidemic seems to have caught Europe and United States underprepared.
In the United States, where much of the initial reaction was proselytizing about a miracle that would make the numbers go down to zero, the government seems to finally have had a rude awakening. Tens rose to hundreds. Hundreds rose to thousands. The capitalistic machine continued to run, maybe at least a week longer than it should have, before it was hurriedly ground to a halt.
In the visualization below, we explore the data from February 28th, 2020 when we first start to see a real uptick in the number of confirmed cases in the United States. Over the next two weeks, the numbers continue to rise while we deliberate on the appropriate response level. In the week of March 16th, many cities across the country issue shelter-in-place restrictions, but not all of them. Domestic travel continues to be allowed. As a consequence, we have multiple “hot spots” of infection that have developed all over the country (unlike China, which managed to keep it down to one). Over the next six to eight weeks, these areas will continue to surge independently and probably seed a few new ones.
In Europe, we see a more concerning trend. Exploring the data, we see that the European response was probably even slower than the United States, as the infections began to surge in Europe as early as Feb 14th. Yet, the continent did not put many restrictions on its borders and major events went ahead as scheduled. In fact, Europe did not implement much of the necessary lockdowns until the week of March 9th, allowing for free travel of its citizens and the virus. By the time that strict lockdowns were put in place, there were too many “hot spots” spread all across Europe where the virus has a critical mass of infections to keep on rising.
In the visualization below, we start exploring the data from February 19th, the date where we start to notice a significant surge in infection rate. Over the next two weeks, the free movement creates a surge in “hot spots” all over the continent. Even today, travel restrictions within the Eurozone continues to be fairly lax, which means that the infection rate is likely to keep going up, seeding more “hot spots” in the area.
Over the next six to eight weeks, we will observe how the infection spreads in these two major blocks. The Chinese containment strategy demonstrates the need for timely and aggressive measures to combat a fast-spreading infection in a shrinking world. Early indications from the data suggest that the virus is likely to thrive much longer in the United States and Europe than it did in China, and likely eclipse the numbers we see there.
The visualizations in this post were built using deck.gl and kepler.gl, part of Uber’s visualization suite. Learn more at vis.gl.
