Today is March 30th, 2020. This is an update from yesterday with Covid-19 statistics from Johns Hopkins University and other sources. The number of cases and the number of deaths in the US are still increasing faster than the predictions I made on March 22nd (If We Do Nothing). Although we are doing things in the US, we are still not doing them fast enough, as the charts below illustrate.
The upper chart shows recorded deaths and cases in the US. Deaths (red lines) have been rising faster than my March 22 predictions.
The center chart shows recorded deaths and cases outside China which are now clearly falling below my March 22 predictions for 310,000 deaths worldwide by Easter.
The lower chart (which is linear, not logarithmic, like the upper two) shows recorded US deaths/day and cases/day plotted with my predictions from March 22. The number of US deaths today ( by 7:00 pm CST according to JHU) has risen to 511, from the approximately 440 on each of the previous two days. The US is not doing enough to “flatten the curve”.
EVEN AFTER THE CURVES HAVE PEAKED IN NEW YORK, EXPECT THAT THE NEW YORK SCENARIO OF EXPONENTIALLY INCREASING NUMBERS OF RECORDED CASES AND DEATHS WILL COME TO EVERY BIG CITY IN THE US.
I urge everyone to help change the shape of these curves. Stay at home if your job is not critical to your country’s recovery. Thank God for the brave men and women who must go out to keep their nations safe and supplied.
Explanation of Formulae Used for Projections
For my initial estimates of Covid-19 growth from 03/23, I took recorded cases (not deaths) outside China, for the 3 weeks before March 22nd, when many countries were in their early-to-middle exponential Covid-19 growth rates. I fitted a simple equation: y = y0 + A exp(x/t) to these data.
I then predicted recorded cases for outside China and for the US. The US projected recorded cases are simply the world cases factored by (recorded US cases on 03/21)/(recorded cases outside China on 03/21).
The projected deaths outside China are made equal to (recorded cases outside China on 03/21)/(deaths outside China on 03/21). The US projected deaths are set to the ratio of (recorded US cases on 03/21)/(recorded US deaths on 03/21).
There are many deficiencies in the method, but I wanted an estimating tool that I understood. It is not yet clear to me where we are going, So much depends on slowing the spread by isolation, which has not been implemented well in the US. The S. Korea isolation and tracing/tracking system seems to have been working very well, however. See, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/world/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-flatten-curve.html