Covid-Insights and Charts — April 7
Highlights: How I look at the different COVID-19 metrics you may see in the media (Cases vs Deaths — per million vs absolute). Japan and Singapore can’t let their guard down. Total deaths in the US could be less than most estimates.
I ended up taking a few days off from my daily updates, given the “new normal” of a 9, 12, and a 19-year-old distance learning from home and some exciting developments work-wise. My posts have focused on the way COVID-19 has been trending in the western nations, which has somewhat stabilized. Going forward, I will likely reduce the frequency of my updates to make sure they are still insightful. As data becomes available from nations that have not yet been hit, I may re-focus my search for insights.
We seem to have reached a peak in most of the western nations I’ve been tracking — but not all.
As we have higher numbers reporting from most countries, I will provide more per million charts, meaning they will be normalized by population to present the numbers in the context of the size of the country.
I want to recap how I’ve approached the different metrics which may help you decipher the different things you read in the media.
1) Number of cases: This is the most leading indicator we’ve got, so it is essential to keep an eye on it — especially in the early days of when a virus hits a country. It is also the most imperfect. It is highly dependent on the extent of testing, which is very inconsistent across countries. It is also not normalized by the population, so it ignores the size of the country and lacks that context. I use this metric in the very early days of the cycle as a potential indicator and with a massive grain of salt.
2) Cases per million: This one still suffers from the high dependency on the level of testing a country can conduct, which is highly inconsistent. However, it is normalized by the population, so it brings the size of the country into the picture. The one problem with normalizing is in the early days of the virus when those smaller numbers can give a false sense of security to larger countries and a false sense of panic for the smaller countries. So I look at this number later in the cycle as opposed to the very early days.
3) Death counts: Given the inconsistencies in testing, fatalities are a more tangible measure of how a country is doing in her fight against a virus — as long as you trust the country is reporting correct numbers. As I’ve mentioned here before, there is plenty of skepticism that there’s been intentional under-reporting from China and Iran and potential incapability from Africa. Deaths are also a laggard indicator since it takes up to a week, sometimes longer, for someone to die after being diagnosed with the disease. So when I look at death counts, I keep in mind what country the data is from before trusting it, and use it as a laggard indicator and not a leading one.
4) Deaths per million: This is the most complete metric as it’s tangible and normalized for the size of the population. However, it’s laggard both because it’s deaths and because it’s normalized. Normalized statistics are less meaningful in the very early days when the absolute numbers are small and can be misleading. I find this metric more useful for countries where I can trust the stats and that are later in their cycles.
Given that background, we can jump into what happened in the last few days.
1) Total deaths in the US surpassed 10,000 yesterday, with a total of 10,989.
2) In my last post, I had observed that deaths in the US seemed to be stabilizing. That prediction appears to have held as the US saw a range of 909–1342 (average 1151) fatalities a day over the last week. If you’ll remember, I had also observed Italy’s peak had lasted about 15 days. If the virus behaves similarly, and that we’ve reached the peak for the US, we can expect another week of about 1100 deaths per day in the US before we see a decrease. It’s worth noting that Spain’s peak seems to have lasted for nine days as they had two lower days — but it’s likely too early to tell.
3) If we believe what I outlined in 2) above, the US will see about 8,000 more deaths over the next week, and then a steady decline — likely totalling another 10,000 — putting the total at under 30,000. Even if I’m off by 2x, that’s a total of 60K, which is a lot lower than the initial estimates of 1–2M and the more recent estimates of 100–200K. You can call my an optimist, but my takeaways here are that lockdown measures are working, and most people are taking them seriously. You can read about how lockdown measures impact fatality projections from actual experts here.
3) Italy had a two-day average of 581 through the last two days, their lowest since March 20th, further indicating they might be off their peak as widely reported.
4) Japan, which seemed to have the virus under control without a complete lockdown like most western countries, declared a state of emergency. Japan’s response has been puzzling at best, which you can read here. It’s worthwhile to note that despite a nationwide lockdown and lack of testing, schools in Japan have been closed and in distance learning mode for the last two months. For parents that are reading, in the post-COVID/pre-vaccine world, which may take a year or longer, schools are likely to be the last places to open and go back to normal.
5) Singapore, another country that had it under control and avoided economy crushing lockdowns, ordered fairly strict lockdown measures due to a new wave of confirmed cases. (source, source)
6) Deaths in Canada seem to have stabilized in the 25–50 range over the last four days. Let’s hope that it will be Canada’s peak.
7) 7-day Compounded Daily Growth Rate (CDGR) of fatalities is dropping for most countries as they establish their respective peaks.
