re: This thing is getting scary

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It's not just killing the elderly.

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That’s right. If you’ve been watching the news briefs coming from the White House, you’ll know that the most hospitalizations are of people aged 26-54.

Also, disturbing information from Italy indicates that the virus may have mutated to a deadlier form. It’s affecting young people more severely than it is in other countries.

Saw a picture where they were doing a human centipede-like beer funnel

Just social distancing

Update on Italy's numbers... they just announced 5,322 new cases for Thursday. Also 427 new fatalities.

Here are their daily fatalities for the past week:

Friday: 250
Saturday: 175
Sunday: 368
Monday: 349
Tuesday: 345
Wednesday: 475
Thursday: 427

The situation there is grim. The new cases today are an increase of 1,100 compared to yesterday's new cases, and an 1,800 increase compared to Tuesday's new cases. Based off these numbers, they aren't anywhere close to flattening the curve.

Italy should serve as a cautionary tale to the rest of the world since they are about 10-14 days ahead of most other countries.

Two weeks ago, they had 41 COVID-19 fatalities as their daily total.... the same total the USA had yesterday. Let's pray our situation is not like Italy's two weeks from now.

Reminder: Spain, France, the UK, and the Netherlands are currently tracking the same or worse than Italy was at this point. I hope I am wrong, but if the pattern continues, these numbers are going to be taking place in many more countries than just Italy in a couple of weeks. God I hope that's not the case.

You said nothing about spring breakers. I said nothing about spring breakers.

There’s obviously differences.

Someone in their 60s died in Maryland as well. That's really not that old...

My uneducated hunch is that smokers are not going to have a good time...

Totally agree.

One thing that is really odd about this virus is the varying fatality rates from country to country.... I know a lot of that depends on testing and the number of tests administered, but Germany and Italy are like night and day when it comes to how many people are dying:

Germany: 15,320 total cases (5th most of all countries)
Italy: 41,035 total cases (2nd most of all countries)

Currently Germany has only had 44 deaths, which is just 0.29% of all cases.

Meanwhile Italy has had 3,405 deaths, which is 8.30% of all cases.

I know Germany probably has better health care and a slightly younger population, but those numbers are not close to being in the same ballpark. These are countries that are very close together in proximity. I just can't figure out why there is such a stark difference in the fatality rate.

Kyle,
without being xenophobic, my readings indicate that Italy is a very popular tourist destination for Chinese visitors. Germany less so. What bothers me is that Hawaii has only had 16 cases as of 3/19 and is a very popular destination for Japanese and a bit less so Chinese tourists. I wish I knew more about how these things travel.

I live in a highly populated state. We probably are normal representative in Coronavirus cases or close. My County has a low population density but a relatively high Coronavirus cases. My County so happened to have locals who toured abroad & brought our cases up. It sucks playing the numbers. Imagine living in Washington state where 1 nursing home caused wide-spread panic.

Yes, Italy likely picked up the virus before others because so many Chinese travel there.

I read something a few days ago though about Germany, and of the very first few cases in their country, there was a very high rate of folks who had recently traveled to Northern Italy to go skiing. So one would think the same strand of flu that has ravaged Northern Italy is likely the same strand that is spreading through Germany.... yet Germany's death rate is 0.29% compared to 8.30% in Italy. It's baffling.

One positive piece of news concerning the USA is that our fatality rate continues to decline each day as more get tested. Most of the experts told us this would be the case, but its not happening like that in other countries.

Here is the US fatality rate by day based on deaths compared to the total number of cases as of that day:

Friday: 2.18%
Saturday: 1.94%
Sunday: 1.85%
Monday: 1.84%
Tuesday: 1.70%
Wednesday: 1.62%
Today: 1.49%

As we test more individuals, that fatality rate is steadily dropping.

The odd thing is that in other countries, the opposite is happening. As they test more each day, the fatality rate continues to rise. Here are the last 5 days of fatality rates by country:

Italy: 7.31%; 7.71%; 7.94%; 8.34%; 8.30%
Iran: 5.19%; 5.69%; 6.11%; 6.54%; 6.98%
Spain: 3.68%; 3.44%; 4.51%; 4.32%; 4.62%
Germany: 0.22%; 0.23%; 0.28%; 0.23%; 0.29%
France: 2.34%; 2.23%; 2.26%; 2.89%; 3.38%
Switzerland: 0.59%; 0.63%; 0.98%; 1.06%; 1.04%
United Kingdom: 2.52%; 3.56%; 3.64%; 3.96%; 4.41%
Netherlands: 1.76%; 1.70%; 2.52%; 2.83%; 3.09%

Those are the Top 8 countries in the world for number of cases with the exceptions of China, USA, and South Korea.

China is an exception because their stats are bogus.
South Korea is an exception because their number of cases is falling.
The USA is an exception because we're the only major country that seems to have an improving fatality rate despite a drastic rise in the number of reported cases each day.

The good news is that the fatality rate in the US is improving. But the scary thing is that its getting worse by the day in all of the above listed countries as more testing is being conducted.

Currently the fatality rate in Western Europe sits at 4.71%. That is disturbingly high considering there are over 105,000 cases in Western Europe. What's even more disturbing is that the fatality rate keeps rising by the day.

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I hope & pray that is the case worldwide. You are a smart guy. I’m sure you are smarter than me since you are young and not just focused on everything about you.

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Thanks. I'm a stats guy who loves looking at numbers and trends. I get consumed with CFB in the fall, consumed with CBB in the winter... now that there is nothing new to focus on other than this virus, its naturally made me try to understand whats happening now with it in various parts of the world.

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Keep up these posts as we all need to know what’s going on with this. I try to be in the know but so much media now is biased each way.

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Will do. I like to type out my thoughts as it helps me process things. Yes, you can't pay attention to the news media right now. I'm more of a "show me the numbers" guy and I'll figure out my beliefs based on those.

I'll tell you my current thoughts about the big picture here... but of course this is very dynamic and will change drastically as time passes... but right now I believe the following:

**Things are about to get way worse. I think the next 2-3 weeks are critical. If things are continuing to worsen 3 weeks from now, I don't even want to let my brain go to what that might look like.

**I do think the precautions most people have put into place are going to start showing up. My best guess is that in 10-14 days things will peak and we'll start to see light at the end of the tunnel here in the US. I think whenever that time comes, we're still 4-6 weeks form life getting back to normal.

**I'm not sure I have the same optimistic view on Europe. For whatever reason, the virus there appears to be far more deadly. They are way more densely packed together there and far more globally connected. I think this thing could ravage Europe far worse than it will here.

**What we're not even talking about yet is Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. This virus is spreading into warm climates, so there is no sign that just because a country has a warm climate that its immune to this thing. Indonesia has had 25 fatalities with six of those coming just today. If it can spread in warm and humid Indonesia, then it can spread just about anywhere.... so far India, Bangladesh, and most of Africa appears to barely be affected. That can very well change and if it spreads in those densely populated countries with poor infrastructure, it could be catastrophic.

**I feel fairly certain that after things get really bad here in the next 1-2 weeks, we'll turn a corner. But because it may take a year or more for this thing to run its course globally, we may be in for a tough time in terms of the global economy.