# Corona - the development in each country



## Vik (Mar 24, 2020)

We have a at least couple of Covid-19 threads already, one about politics, and another one (two, actually) about how we all cope with the situation. Since thesis the only large-isn forum I'm a active in, I'm starting this thread to avoid take the others off topic.
What's the corona situation in your country, and how is it dealing with the situation? I just saw that USA now has tested a much higher number than a few days ago, but it's still only circa 0.1% of the population. I mentioned one example in another thread, referring to someone who claimed that one country had a lot more infected citizens than another one, ignoring how large percentage of the population that had been tested in each of these country (and drawing false conclusions based on those misleading numbers).

I have yet to see a site which shows a continuously updated overview of the international corona situation, with all the most relevant data included – and have seen lots of misleading concussions. Since many assume that someone claims that ***** people now are influenced in a given country, they assume that this number is correct, but it's far from being correct since a very small percentage of the population has been tested in almost all countries I've seen data about. This is important, because false/low numbers about how many who are tested may lead to lots of news readers assuming that the situation isn't as bad as it may be.

This table is far from complete, and is already a few days old, but at least intends to present the kind of info I'm talking about for many countries.

I just saw this info about Denmark (population according to this page: 5 786 719):
13988 are tested
1591 are confirmed as being infected
32 are dead
That's 0,24% of the population tested (13988/5 786 719 * 100)

My blind guess is that if they had tested the whole population, they'd probably find out that at least 10 times as many were infected. I'll write more about why I think these numbers are very important later, but I'm interested in similar info about other nations. Anyone?


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## JohnG (Mar 24, 2020)

Cuomo is quoted in the New York Times as saying he fears the number of cases in NYC is doubling every three days.

I don't know nothin' but I expect that health care system will be overwhelmed in no time if that proves prescient.


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## Will Blackburn (Mar 24, 2020)

Coronavirus Update (Live): 123,545,091 Cases and 2,723,682 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer


Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, tests, and death toll due to the COVID-19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, deaths, and number of tests per 1 Million population. Historical data and info. Daily...




www.worldometers.info


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## Vik (Mar 24, 2020)

JohnG said:


> Cuomo is quoted in the New York Times as saying he fears the number of cases in NYC is doubling every three days.


I've also seen that, and since this are only known cases, the numbers are of course much higher. The last number of known cases I saw for USA was 53 205, which most likely means that there half a million infected people in US already.




Will Blackburn said:


> Coronavirus Update (Live): 123,545,091 Cases and 2,723,682 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer
> 
> 
> Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, tests, and death toll due to the COVID-19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, deaths, and number of tests per 1 Million population. Historical data and info. Daily...
> ...


Thanks Will – that page only shows known cases of course, but mention nothing about how large percentage that has been tested in each of these countries.


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## Robo Rivard (Mar 24, 2020)

I have a feel that a year from now, the population count will be higher in Canada than in the US.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 24, 2020)

USA has just over 50k cases, half of which are in NYC. Yes NYC has 25k cases and its doubling every three days. NYC is in a very scary situation and about to get very bad probably.

Also in all the tests they have been doing nationwide, most places are currently getting about a 10% hit rate on the the test, but NYC is getting 28% hit rate. So a lot of people in NYC are infected and yes its growing very fast.

One theory I heard on TV from someone today is that possibly because of the fact the virus lingers on metal surfaces, that a lot of people using the subways, etc. may have spread it around for weeks. Also there were a lot of people from china that returned to NYC right after the holidays but just before we closed the flights from China.

Right now a big concern is that a lot of New Yorkers are fleeing the area because they are scared. But the unfortunate thing is that they are now spreading the virus to other areas as they go. All of these areas are going to spread the virus, perhaps not as quickly as NYC because of easier social distancing.

CA, particularly LA, is similar to NYC to a lessor degree.

My state has only 300 known cases so far, but it is growing fast, last week it was 100. However only one death here so far. They are also saying in various places that because of the low number of tests that have been given its probable that there are 3x or more actual cases then what we think. I think USA will be over 100,000 in a few days frankly and we will be number#1 for infections in the world. For now the vast majority of those are in NYC and CA is coming up behind it.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 24, 2020)

Also they announced today that in the past week we have tested more people in the USA then Korea has tested in the entire time since they started testing their people. So bottom line is they are testing here about as fast as they can, but there are just logistical problems for testing 330 million people.


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## Will Blackburn (Mar 24, 2020)

Keen to hear what you mean by this Vik?

'My blind guess is that if they had tested the whole population, they'd probably find out that at least 10 times as many were infected. I'll write more about why I think these numbers are very important later'

Im not going to make any assumptions but amid all the panic the media generate it was some relief to listen to Peter Hitchens point of view this morning.


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## Vik (Mar 24, 2020)

Will Blackburn said:


> Keen to hear what you mean by this Vik?
> 
> 'My blind guess is that if they had tested the whole population, they'd probably find out that at least 10 times as many were infected. I'll write more about why I think these numbers are very important later'


I only mean that the numbers we have now in no way to pretend to reflect the total number of infected people in each country – first of all they are very limited: if this would be a political poll among random people, asking eg 50 000 people could give a valid impression of the support for each political party, but testing 50 000 people in a country with 30 million (let alone with 300 million) citizens doesn't tell us much about the total number of infected people. It's not a 'poll', it's not even 'smart testing', and the criterions for who are being tested various not only from country to country, but also from one month to another. 

The current numbers may only show the tip of the current iceberg. There's no reason to assume that a country who tested 0,*% of the population and found, say, 10 000 corona infected people have only 10 000 corona infected citizens.

I don't agree in all this guy writes, but I agree that just looking at numbers of infected people from a large number of countries doesn't provide us with the most important info we need:








We need smart coronavirus testing, not just more testing


"Testing is not a panacea" but intelligent application of #coronavirus testing will provide vital public health information needed to effectively fight this pandemic.




www.statnews.com


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## Land of Missing Parts (Mar 24, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> Yes NYC has 25k cases


New York State has 25k. The latest number for New York City is more like 15K.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 24, 2020)

That could be. Still. 25k in one state and doubling fast


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## Land of Missing Parts (Mar 24, 2020)

Vik said:


> I agree that just looking at numbers of infected people from a large number of countries doesn't provide us with the most important info we need:


It's not a perfect solution, but you can look at the number of COVID-19 deaths each day, then try to guess what percentage that represents of the total infected population. You can also look at the trend in that data and try to infer how fast it was growing approximately two weeks ago. Lack of tests under-counts the infection rate, but it shouldn't affect the number of deaths too much.


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## mc_deli (Mar 24, 2020)

800 cases, only one death, not much testing, only for HCPs and severe cases.... in... Finland.

Press conf in the morning to probably announce closure of bars, restaurants for take-away only.
Possible to announce cutting off the capital area from the rest of the country.
Right now malls and HoReCa still open. Nurseries and schools (up to age 9) can be attended but most have the kids at home. Stupifyingly some ski resorts still open.
Big factor here is we are "trusting" in the govt, so "we" are obedient. Distancing is working overall.
We also have very low pop density.
Problems here are constitutional red tape delaying decision-making, small country-small budget, indy retail was already almost wiped out, the country shuts down before the end of June for summer and the closer we get to that means the economy will continue to tumble until August. Fragile economy probably overall.

PS Did someone just bring a Mail on Sunday columnist to a serious discussion. I'm gonna wash my hands!


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## robgb (Mar 24, 2020)

This crisis would have been lessened considerably if the Trump administration had heeded the warnings back in January when they were first told what could happen here rather than not only ignore it, but pretend it's a hoax and much ado about nothing. Now we've lost precious weeks of preparation—making and distributing hospital supplies, educating the public—thanks to Washington's deaf and dumbness.


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## Vik (Mar 24, 2020)

Land of Missing Parts said:


> It's not a perfect solution, but you can look at the number of COVID-19 deaths each day, then try to guess what percentage that represents of the total infected population. You can also look at the trend in that data and try to infer how fast it was growing approximately two weeks ago. Lack of tests under-counts the infection rate, but it shouldn't affect the number of deaths too much.


True, but my concern is that the reported/found number of positive tests are mistaken for the actual number of people who have a corona infection – this can both lead to lots of people not seeing how wide spread the virus already have become, but also confuse any discussion about how the various approaches to corona works in each of the countries.


mc_deli said:


> 800 cases, only one death, not much testing, only for HCPs and severe cases.... in... Finland.


The last thing I saw about Finland, some days ago, was that they had only tested 3000 people – but with only one person having died from Covid-19 so far you certainly are better off than most countries.


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## Land of Missing Parts (Mar 24, 2020)

Vik said:


> True, but my concern is that the reported/found number of positive tests are mistaken for the actual number of people who have a corona infection


Undoubtedly this is what's happening. And it's a huge problem, and contributes to people not taking social distancing seriously.

In the US, the marketplace of ideas is such that if people tell you news you don't want to hear, you can tune it out and find someone who tells you the thing you _do_ want to hear.


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## gyprock (Mar 24, 2020)

In Australia, as in many countries, the lockdown faucet is gradually tightened depending on the perception of when the shit is going to hit the fan. We're at the stage today where the faucet is nearly closed although schools are still open. As at 6:00am on 25 March 2020, there have been *2,252 confirmed cases* of COVID-19 in Australia. There have been 429 new cases since 6:00am yesterday. We've got about 8 deaths. This is for a country with 25M people.


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## chimuelo (Mar 24, 2020)

Mike Longo died of Corona in NYC recently. He was in decent shape a couple years ago. I know so many guys who took lessons from him when he was still teaching.

New Yorkers got through 911, then 2007/2008, blackouts, etc.
They’ll get through this.

In the meantime I seek satire.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 24, 2020)

The lack of stats on how many people have it are not that important for us to know. Does it really matter if its 1% or 2% or 10%. They are all big numbers of deaths, regardless of how many people have it. Clearly a lot more people have it then we know, we can just assume that to be the case. So be careful!

Mainly what the experts have said is that the main thing is as they get the test reports they can start to map out the epicenters where the virus is exploding and how people are migrating and spreading and basically they can plan closures around that. Not all areas of the country necessarily need to be under total lockdown at the same time, etc.. Without the test kits its completely blind. With the testing happening already, they know a lot more and make good estimates about how and when to close things down more or less.. Its more for them.

The test kits are not meant for us. They are not meant to make us feel better about playing pickle ball in the park with our friends. It will be a long time, if ever, that we get to that point...months... closer to herd immunity.


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## JEPA (Mar 24, 2020)

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## Vik (Mar 25, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> The lack of stats on how many people have it are not that important for us to know. Does it really matter if its 1% or 2% or 10%.


Hi, personally I don't relate much to if I 'need' that info or not, or if this is 'important'. But here in Europe, where we have seen a lot of info about some European countries having a very different approach to the virus than many of the others, this leaves many of us with a lot of questions. And when I see what the experts out there say, most of them agree that we need a lot more info.

I just saw that some of the experts now discuss if UK is close to reaching 'herd immunity'. Eks approach until now has been described an 'unofficial' herd immunity strategy. A new report from the Oxford University speculates if as many as half the UK population maybe are or have been infected already. The virus reached UK in mid January, and was being spread in UK in more than a month before the first official case was registered towards the end of February. The group at Oxford insist that they now need to start testing people for antibodies against the virus, and this is being discussed in other countries as well. If a country already is close to having reached 'herd immunity', that will affect a lot of decisions about their future approach to the virus. In UK they have (as of yesterday) tested more than 90 000 (that's around 0.13% of the population) people - 423 have died and 8164 are reported as being infected so far. If 8.6% of the population (see below) are infected, that's almost 6 million people.









Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population, experts believe


Read our coronavirus live updates HERE Coronavirus: The symptoms




www.standard.co.uk





Personally, I – of course – have no idea if half the UK population are affected. But I've seen numbers from other countries - not based on tests, but on polls.... in one of them, 8.6% of those who were asked replied that they think that they already are or have been infected with the virus. That's also a very large number. US reports around 55 000 'cases', but if 8.6% of the US population also have or have had the virus, that's 38 million cases.

In another questionnaire, where everyone who wants to can register and state off they think they are infected or not, as many as 16% of the registered participants suspect that they are or have been affected. Maybe this number doesn't tell us much (since more of those who feel or have been sick probably will report), but nevertheless - there may be a LOT more people out there who are or have been infected. All this info, needed or not, is very useful for instance for people like you and me who want more people to be more careful.

The first articles in Scandinavia in January (or was it December?) about what we should do if the virus reaches our era may also have been misleading: these articles may also have also mixed up 'known cases' with 'cases', and assumed that since there weren't anyone here who were known to carry the virus (nobody had been tested, I guess). The experts wrote what they did as of there were no infected people here yet. But what if some of us had corona already back then, and assumed that we didn't have it because everybody wrote about 'what do we do if corona occurs here'? More, and more accurate info won't harm anyone, and I think - due to all the conflicting stuff that's written out there, the we generally need to know what happens.

And if you ask me if I think it matters if there are 8000 (= already registered cases) or 6 million (=8.6%) or 33 million cases (=half the population) in UK, my answer is that it matters a lot.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 25, 2020)

Vik said:


> The first articles in Scandinavia in January (or was it December?) about what we should do if the virus reaches our era may also have been misleading: these articles may also have also mixed up 'known cases' with 'cases', and assumed that since there weren't anyone here who were known to carry the virus (nobody had been tested, I guess). The experts wrote what they did as of there were no infected people here yet. But what if some of us had corona already back then, and assumed that we didn't have it because everybody wrote about 'what do we do if corona occurs here'? More, and more accurate info won't harm anyone, and I think - due to all the conflicting stuff that's written out there, the we generally need to know what happens.



I agree. I think the world horribly underestimated this virus. Across the board. China underestimated it and didn't tell anyone until it was too late, by then they were going into some damage control of their own. Europe was next to act, and Italy also underestimated the problem, did not take it seriously enough, and look at Italy now. Other parts of Europe and USA are trying to take it more seriously perhaps then Italy, but USA also waited too long really...we missed the window to contain it...even now americans aren't taking it seriously.....and like it or not...is spreading here rapidly now and we are going to have it also. Actually I think certain parts of europe and South America have taken a much more strict approach to handling the situation then USA has. Even though USA had more time then anyone else perhaps because we blocked the flights from china early on...we bought a little time, but then it was originally described to us as something we can get through and that since we blocked the flights from china we should be good...but again...eveyrone underestimated this virus completely..mainly in how contagious it is...almost impossible to contain it once it leaves a room.

Regarding testing... that is a matter of that we did not have the capacity to test everyone, or even many. They are ramping that up, but it will be months before we can really test tens of millions of the population to draw better conclusions about it. For now its nothing but a complete wild guess how many are actually infected.

In the past week, in the USA they have tested around 250,000, with a 10% hit rate, except for NY. Those were all people with symptoms. So the big question mark is how many people are there without symptoms carrying it around? That would be wonderful to know, but we don't have the capacity to find out right now. No amount of complaining about that will make it happen.

I do not think USA already has 38 million infected. Yet. But I do think we are going to see more then 38 million infected before this is over. At least 100,000,000.

I feel that here in usa we are going to see NYC and LA go through a major crisis for the next month, and the rest of the country will be in a crisis in May. I do not see a way around it. This virus just spreads way too easily and is spreading right now. NY and especially NYC really spread it early...but it has gotten out..its everywhere...and its spreading, perhaps more slowly and perhaps some other locales will avoid a hospital crisis, but we shall see.

Also this question about what the mortality rate is, is leading some people to speculate that the actual infection rate must be way higher then reported, so therefore the mortality rate is a lot less....perhaps even as low as the flu. Some people want to believe that...and hey...I hope they turn out to be right! But I don't think they will...and its a huge gamble to assume that without further data which we don't have and can't get yet. So in my view...we don't need to know what the mortality rate is. Its high enough to stay the hell in your house and stop spreading it, and we'll figure out the math later. its too late to contain it now anyway. 

I realize people are looking for a shred of hope that they can go back to work and on about their life....if they can find some justification to do so. But we don't have data to support that. We have scary stories from China, Italy and Spain at the moment...and soon NYC. Once the tragedy hits in NYC, nobody will be questioning it anymore. USA will be number#1 infected country with over 100,000 in a week.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 25, 2020)

Regarding herd immunity....figure 40-80% of the population have to get it before it gets to that point. I heard one of the talking heads today say that Singapore, for example, will not get to herd immunity early. They have effectively contained it (for now). But eventually it may leak in there again and they'll still be faced with that. Italy is probably the closest to reaching herd immunity right now, but If we really need 40-80% of the population to become infected in order to reach that state...we all have a long ways to go and a lot of sick people.


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## Vik (Mar 25, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> Regarding testing... that is a matter of that we did not have the capacity to test everyone, or even many. They are ramping that up, but it will be months before we can really test tens of millions of the population to draw better conclusions about it. For now its nothing but a complete wild guess how many are actually infected.


Well, there are some new test methods coming up, where the results will be available in 10 minutes, and/but that's antibody tests, and may not recognise people who just have been infected.

I think the best thing that has happened so far is that most (?) countries recently have intensified the work with trying to find out how many that already have been infected.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 25, 2020)

well let's hope they can roll out 10-20 million of them in a reasonable time frame and then we will know more. Until then we don't know shit.


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## Vik (Apr 26, 2020)

Around circa tomorrow there will be 3 000 000 confirmed cases worldwide, and 1 000 000 confirmed cases in USA. Then someone, eg. a president, may claim that that's because USA has tested more than anyone else, more than 5 million people - and that's the reason why USA has 1 out of 3 confirmed cases. Next, someone may answer that there are more than 40 countries who tests a larger percentage than the population that US does, followed up by someone who says that some of these countries have a very low population – and so on.

But this is no contest, and there certainly are no winners. The list over at worldometers.info is still interesting (especially now when it also shows how many citizens many of these countries have tested), since it contains enough info to get an impression of how things are going in each of the countries - which _may_ tell something about how their strategies have worked so far. With this column, it's also possible to extract some more interesting columns, like how large proportion of the tested in each country that are C19 positive, so I pasted that table into a spreadsheet and found some info IMHO maybe should have been in that table already. Whether we look at how many who are infected among those who have been tested (%), or number of confirmed deaths (%), or the sum of confirmed deaths and critical cases (both as %), the same few countries top all these lists.

Sorting them by the combination of confirmed deaths and number of current cases with a critical/serious condition (which may be the parameters that says the most of the current situation combined with what happened so far), Spain, Belgium and France tops that list, followed by Netherlands, Sweden and USA. Iran, Italy, Germany and Ireland is also topping that list. I have friends in several of these countries and hope they all do what they can do deal with the situation. Still, I'm surprised that so many of these and other countries are talking about loosening up in terms of restrictions etc, now when the situation is so close to 3 million confirmed cases worldwide, which unfortunately means that the number of actual cases must be a lot higher (since we have tested a very small percentage of the world population).


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## Fredeke (May 4, 2020)

Now in Belgium: after 6 weeks of lockdown, the daily death and infection rates have very much decreased. We're starting to phase out of lockdown, progressively. We will continue so for as long as the numbers remain low, but we are ready to revert if they start increasing again as a result.

I've read that in neighboring France, they cut the infection rate to as low as 0.5 (!), but at the cost of extreme measures and extreme enforcement. The police there is harsh, and people are not happy.

You could say that for Belgium too I guess (there have been riots in Brussels after a youngster died in a police chase when he wasn't observing lockdown), but it's still not as hard as in France, as I understand it.

Me, I live in the countryside, and am actually having a swell time. But I feel for all those people in town, in appartements, without a garden or even a balcony... :-( Maybe I would end up rioting too.


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