This is a follow-up to an article from February 2nd (2020) that I posted on LinkedIn about the extending footprint of the Coronavirus. The official name is COVID-19. In that article, I had included a link to an interactive infographic (dated Jan 26th) that outlined the descriptive statistics behind the potential threats. The rate at which COVID-19 was extending its grasp within and outside of mainland China compared to SARS-2003 and MERS-2012 was one of the measures that concerned and led me to write that article.
In the above infographics, I am trying to look at the same problem through a different lens. Please click on the image below to use the interactive chart.
[Update 03/14/2020: The worldwide infections jumped by ~30,000 in one day and surpassed the overall infections in China. Please visit my blog site and use the interactive infographics to get the latest numbers.
The numbers associated with the below points are based on 3/13/2020 data. ]
Positive Signs:
- The infections and death curves have started flattening where it all started. In addition, 69% of those infected were recovered in China.
- Neighboring countries like Macau and Nepal reported their first infection in the month of January and no additional infections were reported from these two countries since then. All the patients in these two countries fully recovered from this disease.
- Worldwide infections have not started plateauing. If what’s happening in China is a pointer, it looks like it’s just a matter of time before we see a flattening curve for the other countries.
- If the numbers that are coming from China are correct, then it looks like the inflection point of the infection curve could be somewhere in the middle of February. This flattening occurred a month after the inflection curve in China took off (around Jan 25th). The worldwide infection took off late February. There is an interesting video on YouTube that talks about Exponential growth and epidemics.
- The total number of infections and deaths worldwide currently are over 134,000 and 5000, respectively. The infections and deaths of SARS (2003) were 8096 and 774 respectively over a period of 7 months. Additionally, the MERS in 2012 infected and killed 1329 and 525, respectively.
- The financial market in the US has lost more than 20% since then. The intangible costs associated with social distancing are hard to measure as the world is trying to grapple with containing the spread. We cannot put a price tag on human life. Therefore, the total economic loss is much beyond comprehension.
- Within the European Union, Italy has paid the heaviest price so far. The death rate in Italy is a staggering 6.7%.
- The death rate currently stands at 2.2% out of the total 1300 infections (1%) in the US. The recovery rate is ~1%. The US does not even appear in the top 20 list of countries that have experienced a high recovery rate. Being the leader of the free world and compared to other advanced countries, the state of our healthcare system is something to be concerned given the money we spend on healthcare overall.
- Humanity is what’s required in this order of first-degree crisis rather than bickering over ideological political issues. We need leadership to bring unity in fighting this menace.
- Fortunately, both ends of the political spectrum have started proposing measures such as universal sick pay, hospital reimbursements for the uninsured, and extending other benefits to needy people in the US.
- As in the case of all other pandemics, humanity will pass this one too. With advancements in AI and machine learning and the data being collected in real-time, there will be no dearth in research and studies conducted. I am hopeful that we will learn from this to prevent future epidemics from spreading like this one.