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So I have access to all the data for COVID-19 and have been tracking it daily since 3/11. I think that we are hitting the start of the flattening of at least the death curve.
I focused on following deaths because we don't know the prevalence of the disease and it seemed to be the only reliable metric. Now, one issue with deaths is that it is reflecting transmissions that occurred ~12-16 days ago, since the average time before symptoms post contraction of the disease is ~4-5 days and the few studies published so far show that approx. patient course from admission to ICU to death is about 10-14 days. So looking at deaths today means understanding what happened in people contracting COVID about 2 weeks ago (on average).
From 3/11 to 3/26 there was a general trend where the doubling of deaths was speeding up from 4 to every 3 days. This started to slow on 3/27, and between then and 4/1 it was 4 days. for 4/2 it was 5 days. Assuming that the death rates for the disease are stable (and there would be no reason to doubt that as there are no specific new therapies to treat), this means that transmissions are decreasing (and subsequent deaths in the minority of patients who get sick enough to go to the ICU).
Following a similar trend, the number of daily deaths grew at a very alarming rate between 3/11 and 4/4. While there were days that deaths were less than the day before, this was likely due to stochastic events and dealing with small numbers. This trend never repeated and was rare. For example, between 3/13 and 4/4 there were two days where the deaths were lower the the preceding day, and in both cases these death numbers were preceded or followed by a large jump in the total deaths- these were on 3/21 (53 deaths, with 59 deaths the prior day, followed by 126 deaths), and 3/23 (73 deaths, following the large jump on 3/22 of 126 deaths and followed on 3/24 with 204 deaths). However, the new deaths total for 4/4 was 1352 and has been decreasing for 2 continuous days now (1184 in 4/5 and 1182 4/6). It's still early, but given a large step downward and the start of a possible trend is hopeful.
While it may be desirable to track hospitalizations, these data have been hard to track since they are not very complete and have only been available since 3/21. Although flawed, these numbers also follow this trend, as COVID+ hospitalizations peaked on 4/1 with 4482 new hospitalizations and has been variable since between 1488 and 3796 admissions.
Lastly, although even more flawed due to a lack of tests or strategy for testing, the new positive cases also follows this trend, with 33,840 cases on 4/4 and a decrease since. Like deaths, this number has steadily increased daily with rare exception except for a single day (3/24). However, I don't think this turnaround can be attributed to testing availability. One metric that has only trended up every day is the proportion of cases that test positive (positive test rate). This started at 10.0% on 3/16 and slowly crept up incrementally every day until 4/3 when it hit 19.3%. Since then that number has also come down slightly and stabilized at 18.8% for the last 3 days.
My take from this is that this might be early signs that whatever we were doing as a country starting about 2 weeks ago is likely starting to put a dent in spread of COVID-19.
I focused on following deaths because we don't know the prevalence of the disease and it seemed to be the only reliable metric. Now, one issue with deaths is that it is reflecting transmissions that occurred ~12-16 days ago, since the average time before symptoms post contraction of the disease is ~4-5 days and the few studies published so far show that approx. patient course from admission to ICU to death is about 10-14 days. So looking at deaths today means understanding what happened in people contracting COVID about 2 weeks ago (on average).
From 3/11 to 3/26 there was a general trend where the doubling of deaths was speeding up from 4 to every 3 days. This started to slow on 3/27, and between then and 4/1 it was 4 days. for 4/2 it was 5 days. Assuming that the death rates for the disease are stable (and there would be no reason to doubt that as there are no specific new therapies to treat), this means that transmissions are decreasing (and subsequent deaths in the minority of patients who get sick enough to go to the ICU).
Following a similar trend, the number of daily deaths grew at a very alarming rate between 3/11 and 4/4. While there were days that deaths were less than the day before, this was likely due to stochastic events and dealing with small numbers. This trend never repeated and was rare. For example, between 3/13 and 4/4 there were two days where the deaths were lower the the preceding day, and in both cases these death numbers were preceded or followed by a large jump in the total deaths- these were on 3/21 (53 deaths, with 59 deaths the prior day, followed by 126 deaths), and 3/23 (73 deaths, following the large jump on 3/22 of 126 deaths and followed on 3/24 with 204 deaths). However, the new deaths total for 4/4 was 1352 and has been decreasing for 2 continuous days now (1184 in 4/5 and 1182 4/6). It's still early, but given a large step downward and the start of a possible trend is hopeful.
While it may be desirable to track hospitalizations, these data have been hard to track since they are not very complete and have only been available since 3/21. Although flawed, these numbers also follow this trend, as COVID+ hospitalizations peaked on 4/1 with 4482 new hospitalizations and has been variable since between 1488 and 3796 admissions.
Lastly, although even more flawed due to a lack of tests or strategy for testing, the new positive cases also follows this trend, with 33,840 cases on 4/4 and a decrease since. Like deaths, this number has steadily increased daily with rare exception except for a single day (3/24). However, I don't think this turnaround can be attributed to testing availability. One metric that has only trended up every day is the proportion of cases that test positive (positive test rate). This started at 10.0% on 3/16 and slowly crept up incrementally every day until 4/3 when it hit 19.3%. Since then that number has also come down slightly and stabilized at 18.8% for the last 3 days.
My take from this is that this might be early signs that whatever we were doing as a country starting about 2 weeks ago is likely starting to put a dent in spread of COVID-19.
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