I think I found a way of looking at COVID-19 data in a way that makes intuitive sense to me – growth rate. Let’s revisit the scary dashboard:

This is a very dramatic presentation of information, and a good way of getting a sense of how things are going right now, which is to say, um… not well.

But if we look at the data (from here), we can break it down in different ways. I’m going to focus on the daily death rate. In other words, what is the percentage of deaths from one day to the next?

These still look horrible, but they do not appear to be getting worse. The curves are flattening. What happens if we look at the same data as a rate problem though?

That looks very different. After a big initial spike, both countries have a rate of decrease that fits pretty well to a linear trend. So what do we get if we plug the current rate of increase in and solve for zero? In other words, when are there no more new cases?

Italy’s current rate is 11.89%, or 0.1189. Iran is 7.66% or 0.0766. Using those values we get some good news:

• Italy: 27 days, or April 19th
• Iran: 15 days, or April 7th

Ok, so let’s look at the US. There’s not really enough data to do this on a state-by state basis yet, but there is plenty for the whole country:

This is not good. Our rate of increase is more than either Iran’s or Italy’s rate of decrease. At this point, there is literally no end in sight.

Ok, let’s look at the world as a whole:

Also not good. Things clearly improved as China got a handle on its outbreak, but the trends are now going the other way as the disease spreads out into the reset of the world. It’s clearly going to be a bumpy ride.

I’d like to point out that there is no good way to tell here what caused these trends to change. It could be treatments, or it could be susceptibility. Italy and Iran did not take the level of action that China did, yet if trends continue, they will be clear in about a month. Well know more as the restrictions loosen, and there is or isn’t a new upturn.

Ok, Back to work

10:00 – ASRC GOES

• Getting InfluxDB to work in Docker
• Use cases for John and whitepaper for Darren?
• Noon research Meeting
• 4:00 ML seminar?