Highlights: Is Belgium the next virus epicentre in Europe? Sweden’s approach may be backfiring. The next week for the US could be like France or Switzerland.

In my last post, I’d written about different metrics that are reported on COVID-19 and my thoughts on the best way to interpret those different metrics. I had suggested that the number of fatalities normalized by population was the most laggard, but the most definitive measure of how a country is doing in her fight against COVID-19.

So I thought it’d be good to list the top 20 countries by this metric:

You can also see how the death count has been trending over time for these countries — since they hit one death per million.

Here are some of my observations on the above:

1) Spain and Italy being the top two, is not a surprise, but Belgium may be a surprise for most. Belgium has been on lockdown for a month, and there’s credible attribution to their high numbers that their school break was last week of February when a lot of Belgians go skiing in Northern Italy. And based on what we know now, that would have been a terrible time to visit Northern Italy. There is a similar theme in Canada where the earlier timing of a school break attributed to Quebec’s high number of cases and deaths compared with the rest of Canada.

As of four days ago, Belgium has the steepest normalized death curve of all countries — even Spain. It wouldn’t be a stretch to argue that Belgium is the new epicentre for COVID-19 in Europe, especially since they are earlier in their daily death curve compared to Italy and Spain. The daily death curves for each of these countries are towards the end of the post.

2) The UK seems to be following Italy’s death curve. The UK is 15 days behind Italy and was hesitant, like Italy, in introducing lockdown measures.

3) As you probably already know, Sweden has been an outlier among European countries in their more laissez-faire response to COVID-19. They are #8 for total deaths (two spots above the US) when normalized for population and had an alarming spike in their death growth rate over the last week. So I’m not sure if we can argue that they had some secret sauce in how to deal with COVID-19. It will be interesting to monitor Sweden over the next week. It’s worth noting that Sweden has a minority government, which could limit the ability of a party in power to make swift decisions (good for democracy, can be bad for virus response).

4) The US ranking at #10 may be a source of calm for the world’s superpower. And there are some encouraging signs as growth rates of both cases and deaths are declining. However, it is worth noting that the US is earlier in the virus’ cycle (Day #22 vs #31 for France and #41 for Italy). Two other curves that are good to compare with the US’s on this chart are France and Switzerland. As you’ll see, France had a very similar death rate to the US’s on their day #22, but then it skyrocketed. Switzerland was in a similar territory on their day #22 but was then able to keep its curve flatter over the next eight days. It’s worth noting that Switzerland has the highest tests conducted per capita, whereas the US’ test rate is closer (yet higher than) France’s (source).

5) Ecuador is worth mentioning due to its geographic location. Most flu viruses slow down in warmer weather, and there’s been hope that COVID-19 will behave the same. I haven’t seen a medical study just yet showing one way or another. Still, Ecuador showing up in the top 20 countries for total deaths is worrisome since they, as per their namesake, are on the equator. It’s currently about 20 Celcius (68 Fahrenheit) in Ecuador.

6) Canada is doing surprisingly well. I say “surprisingly” because I was expecting Canada to follow the US curve since the two countries are similar in so many ways, and many macro and socio-economic metrics mirror each other in the two countries (adjusted for population, of course). Although early in the cycle, Canada seems to be trending like Germany’s curve, which I sincerely hope will be the case. It’s worth noting that Canada also surpassed South Korea in tests conducted per capita as of a few days ago (source).

Below are the daily death count curves for each of the top 20 countries which show us how far along they are in their COVID-19 journey. I also find it to be a better visualization to see how bad it is in one country versus another.

Daily Deaths per million — Ranked by Total Deaths per million.

Covid Insights and Charts — April 11 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Highlights: How I look at the different COVID-19 metrics you may see in the media (Cases vs Deaths — per million vs absolute). Japan and Singapore can’t let their guard down. Total deaths in the US could be less than most estimates.

I ended up taking a few days off from my daily updates, given the “new normal” of a 9, 12, and a 19-year-old distance learning from home and some exciting developments work-wise. My posts have focused on the way COVID-19 has been trending in the western nations, which has somewhat stabilized. Going forward, I will likely reduce the frequency of my updates to make sure they are still insightful. As data becomes available from nations that have not yet been hit, I may re-focus my search for insights.

We seem to have reached a peak in most of the western nations I’ve been tracking — but not all.

As we have higher numbers reporting from most countries, I will provide more per million charts, meaning they will be normalized by population to present the numbers in the context of the size of the country.

I want to recap how I’ve approached the different metrics which may help you decipher the different things you read in the media.

1) Number of cases: This is the most leading indicator we’ve got, so it is essential to keep an eye on it — especially in the early days of when a virus hits a country. It is also the most imperfect. It is highly dependent on the extent of testing, which is very inconsistent across countries. It is also not normalized by the population, so it ignores the size of the country and lacks that context. I use this metric in the very early days of the cycle as a potential indicator and with a massive grain of salt.

2) Cases per million: This one still suffers from the high dependency on the level of testing a country can conduct, which is highly inconsistent. However, it is normalized by the population, so it brings the size of the country into the picture. The one problem with normalizing is in the early days of the virus when those smaller numbers can give a false sense of security to larger countries and a false sense of panic for the smaller countries. So I look at this number later in the cycle as opposed to the very early days.

3) Death counts: Given the inconsistencies in testing, fatalities are a more tangible measure of how a country is doing in her fight against a virus — as long as you trust the country is reporting correct numbers. As I’ve mentioned here before, there is plenty of skepticism that there’s been intentional under-reporting from China and Iran and potential incapability from Africa. Deaths are also a laggard indicator since it takes up to a week, sometimes longer, for someone to die after being diagnosed with the disease. So when I look at death counts, I keep in mind what country the data is from before trusting it, and use it as a laggard indicator and not a leading one.

4) Deaths per million: This is the most complete metric as it’s tangible and normalized for the size of the population. However, it’s laggard both because it’s deaths and because it’s normalized. Normalized statistics are less meaningful in the very early days when the absolute numbers are small and can be misleading. I find this metric more useful for countries where I can trust the stats and that are later in their cycles.

Given that background, we can jump into what happened in the last few days.

1) Total deaths in the US surpassed 10,000 yesterday, with a total of 10,989.

2) In my last post, I had observed that deaths in the US seemed to be stabilizing. That prediction appears to have held as the US saw a range of 909–1342 (average 1151) fatalities a day over the last week. If you’ll remember, I had also observed Italy’s peak had lasted about 15 days. If the virus behaves similarly, and that we’ve reached the peak for the US, we can expect another week of about 1100 deaths per day in the US before we see a decrease. It’s worth noting that Spain’s peak seems to have lasted for nine days as they had two lower days — but it’s likely too early to tell.

3) If we believe what I outlined in 2) above, the US will see about 8,000 more deaths over the next week, and then a steady decline — likely totalling another 10,000 — putting the total at under 30,000. Even if I’m off by 2x, that’s a total of 60K, which is a lot lower than the initial estimates of 1–2M and the more recent estimates of 100–200K. You can call my an optimist, but my takeaways here are that lockdown measures are working, and most people are taking them seriously. You can read about how lockdown measures impact fatality projections from actual experts here.

3) Italy had a two-day average of 581 through the last two days, their lowest since March 20th, further indicating they might be off their peak as widely reported.

4) Japan, which seemed to have the virus under control without a complete lockdown like most western countries, declared a state of emergency. Japan’s response has been puzzling at best, which you can read here. It’s worthwhile to note that despite a nationwide lockdown and lack of testing, schools in Japan have been closed and in distance learning mode for the last two months. For parents that are reading, in the post-COVID/pre-vaccine world, which may take a year or longer, schools are likely to be the last places to open and go back to normal.

5) Singapore, another country that had it under control and avoided economy crushing lockdowns, ordered fairly strict lockdown measures due to a new wave of confirmed cases. (source, source)

6) Deaths in Canada seem to have stabilized in the 25–50 range over the last four days. Let’s hope that it will be Canada’s peak.

7) 7-day Compounded Daily Growth Rate (CDGR) of fatalities is dropping for most countries as they establish their respective peaks.

Covid-Insights and Charts — April 7 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Highlights: Back of the envelope estimation suggests the peak for some countries and ten more days of it for the US, the UK and Germany. France has a surge of fatalities. Some good progress on testing data — but far from ideal.

In my last post, I had observed that the peak looked like a plateau for Italy, which is still the case as they’ve had 750–850 deaths per day since peaking at 971 eight days ago. We’re starting to see a similar trend with the US, Germany, the UK and Spain. Let’s assume the data from China is at least directionally and trend-wise correct, even if the absolute numbers may be underreported. Their peak lasted for 15 days (Feb 7th to 21st). If we assume that the peak of the virus will trend similarly in other countries, that would mean we should be off the peak for the US, Germany and the UK in 10–11 days and about a week for Spain.

Again, yours truly is no expert. The biggest issue I see with this estimation, besides the unreliability of the data from China, is that the lockdown measures in China were a lot more strict and authoritarian than what Western countries can ever do. That leads me to fear that the peak can last longer or that we may not even be at a peak for some of those countries.

You can see this more clearly in this chart, which has a logarithmic vertical axis.

Deaths

1) The US had almost 4,000 deaths over the last four days (909, 1,059, 915, 1,104) — a total of 3,987.

2) The US’ death curve surpassed Italy, as I had predicted in my last post. Currently, the countries with the highest pace, in order: Spain, the US and Italy.

3) France had 2,475 deaths in two days — the highest two-day toll for any country on record. That’s more than double their previous two-day average.

4) Spain surpassed a total of 10,000 deaths on Friday, currently sitting at 10,935. Spain’s death curve is the steepest of all nations at the moment, meaning the virus is killing the fastest there.

5) Canada had 49 deaths on Friday, almost double the day before (29). Canada’s daily death toll has doubled every day for four days in a row now (7, 13, 29, 49).

6) China reported ten deaths on Thursday — their highest in over two weeks.

7) Sweden and the Netherlands are starting to report alarmingly high fatalities on a per capita basis. They both also have conducted a fairly low number of tests per capita, which is a cause for alarm that things are to get worse.

8) The 7-day Compounded Daily Growth Rate (CDGR) for fatalities continues to decline for most countries except for France and the UK. I had observed in my earlier posts that the consistent decline in CDGR signals that we are nearing a peak, which seems to be the case now with a few of the countries — especially Italy.

Cases

As you know, the confirmed case counts are highly dependent on the number of tests, a country conducts. Fewer tests, fewer cases, more tests, more cases.

I had looked for testing data about a week ago and had not found a source that was reliable or updated regularly.

There’s been some significant progress in this area, and Ourworldindata.org has some useful charts on this. I’ve included the per million version of that chart below. You can also click here for an interactive version of this chart — unfortunately, Medium wouldn’t let me embed it.

Please note that this data has a lot of issues that Our World in Data explains in detail here.

I’m going to try to normalize the case counts by tests conducted in a future post, as many of you have suggested. In the meantime, this allows us to put the case numbers in perspective. For instance, we can deduct that since the US has a lower number of tests per million, there is a higher likelihood of a higher number of unreported cases.

Daily Covid-Insights and Charts — April 4 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Deaths in the US hit new high globally. Deaths in the UK quadruple over two days and may soon surpass Spain’s pace, which is the steepest. The weekly death growth rate is declining across the board (except the UK), which could indicate that we are nearing the peak.

Before jumping into the data, two new reports that can shed some light on the length of the lockdown measures in North America came out yesterday. The first one is an excellent op-ed by Bill Gates in the Washington Post, where among his three recommendations is a national shutdown in the US for up to another ten weeks, which would take us to mid-June. The second one was reported by the National Post, which is a leaked document from the Government of Canada that their “best-case scenario” is July. The “sometime in the Summer” approximation that we had before stands. I do fear that North Americans are not going to be able to follow the shutdown guidelines as well either through their making or through policymakers that flinch due to the economic impact, which in turn will extend the entire timeline and cause more fatalities.

Deaths

1) The US has 1059 deaths in a single day — highest for any country in a single day. The US total deaths have surpassed 5000, sitting at 5138 as of yesterday.

2) If you look at the Cases vs Deaths chart, the US total death curve will likely pass Italy’s later today — meaning the virus will soon be killing people in the US faster than it did in Italy. Yesterday was Day #29 for the US and had a total of 5138 deaths. Italy was at 5476 on Day #29 and 6077 on by Day #30.

4) Spain has the steepest death curve, meaning it is the country where the virus has killed the fastest with 9053 people by day #30.

5) Spain (864), France (509), and the UK (743) all had their highest number of deaths on record yesterday.

6) The UK number is significant as the UK reported 180 deaths just two days ago, 381 the day after and 743 yesterday. More than doubling a day — 4x (quadrupled) over two days. This surge has also brought the UK’s death curve dangerously close to Spain’s.

7) Canada recorded 13 deaths, surpassing a total of 100, but delays in reporting are likely masking 40–50 others (source).

8) The 7-day Compounded Daily Growth Rate (CDGR) for fatalities is declining for all countries charted except for the UK. And for consecutive periods for most of them. That may be the sign of getting close to a peak; however, I think that’s far from certain. Strained health systems may be underreporting deaths like in Italy (source), and larger countries like the US and Canada can have a further outbreak in states and provinces that are currently reporting low numbers.

Cases

1) The US reported 27,103 new confirmed cases yesterday. Highest on record for the US or any other country globally.

2) The US now has over 23% of all confirmed cases globally (216,721 vs. 711,716). Please note that the number of confirmed cases is highly dependent on the scale of testing, which has been getting better in the US.

3) Germany is on day #31 and is now at 73,522 confirmed cases — highest for any country that’s been on day #31 so far, including China or Italy. Germany has had the highest number of tests done per capita among most western countries, which is the reason behind this high number.

4) After their first day of no new cases the day before, South Korea reported 190 new cases yesterday. 190 is close enough to their typical two-day pace, so I’m going to assume that no new cases two days ago was a reporting glitch.

5) The UK reported 4324 new cases yesterday, their highest on record for a single day.

Daily Covid-Insights and Charts — April 2 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Highlights

A surge in fatalities in the US, likely to get worse. New highs for most of Europe. The peak we seek maybe a mini-plateau. Now US Intelligence is saying China concealed data on how bad it really was. Good news from South Korea.

Deaths

1) The US hit a new high of fatalities in a single day with 909 (vs. 661 the day before). That’s almost a 50% increase in a single day. I had noted yesterday that it had taken Italy about a week to make a similar jump, I was surprised to see that this morning. It saddens me to observe that given the expert consensus predictions of about 200- 240K deaths for the US, I do think we will see daily deaths in the thousands before this is over in the US. Total recorded deaths in the US are now 4079.

2) If you observe the Total Death curves below, I fear that the US’s death curve will pass Italy reasonably soon. Given that the US has a population of 5–6 times Italy, this probably shouldn’t be surprising. Still, I was hoping that the age-mix, lower percentage of multi-generational homes, better emergency response systems and the early warning the US had having seen what the virus did in Europe and Asia would have resulted in a flatter curve than Italy. The same goes for Spain, but four days instead of five. So, the peaks that we seek may not just be a day or two, but sustained over days and even weeks.

3) Germany (149), Spain (849), France (499), and the UK (381) had their highest number of fatalities yesterday. Especially in the UK, that’s more than double from the day before (180).

4) Italy had 839 deaths yesterday, which is the second day in a row that it’s been higher. Italy may have peaked, but that peak is looking more like a mini plateau right now since Italy over 800 deaths a day for five days in a row now.

5) South Korea had its first day without COVID-19 deaths or new confirmed cases in 40 days.

6) Not included in the charts, but both Belgium and Netherlands have a total of 61 deaths per million population — making them third and fourth place after Italy (206) and Spain (181).

7) The 7-day compounded daily growth rate (CDGR) of fatalities continues to decrease for all countries except for Germany, which had a surge in the last two days.

Cases

1) The UK (3009), France (7578), Spain (9222) and the US (24998) had new highs in new cases yesterday. As usual, please remember that the number of confirmed cases dependant on testing capacity and likely under and over-represented in different countries.

2) The 7-day CDGR of new cases seems to be near flat for most countries, modest change in a few. I believe this is due to ramped-up testing in most countries charted at the moment.

Chinese Data

I’ve continually mentioned the media reports of growing sentiment around the accuracy and completeness of the data coming from China (here, here, here, here, and here). This morning a new report, this time from US Intelligence reporting the same. No word on the extent of the data gap. I’ll keep you posted.

As I mentioned yesterday, the critical risk here is that the medical and economic models that have informed the responses of other countries have used the data from China. And if that data is under-reported, the medical and economic responses formed based on those models run the risk of being underpowered. Needless to say, that risk has profound health and economic implications.

Daily Covid-Insights and Charts — April 1 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Germany has almost double the number of fatalities. Canada has a surge in deaths and cases. And a quick word on COVID data from China.

Deaths

1) The US (661), Germany (128), France (418) and Canada (28) all had their highest number of deaths yesterday.

2) Yesterday was day #27 for the US when they had 661 deaths. Italy had 625 deaths on their day #27. Italy peaked at 971 deaths on their day #34, which would be a week from now for the US.

3) Germany’s number of deaths is almost twice the day before (128 vs 66).

4) Italy, which had two days of declines in fatalities after the peak of 971, had an increase yesterday with 810.

5) Other countries had modest declines.

6) The 7-day compounded daily growth rate (CDGR) of deaths declined for all countries listed except for the US and Canada, which is expected as they are behind the other countries in their COVID-journey.

7) The 7-day CDGR of deaths is still the highest for the US among this group (when they were on day 27) with 27.15%. Another way to say this is that COVID-19 is killing people faster in the US than it did in other countries.

Cases

1) The US had 21,595 new cases yesterday — highest on record for the US and any other country. As of yesterday, 21.16% of confirmed cases globally are in the US. The 7-Day case growth rate continues to decline for the US, in line with other countries that are further ahead in their COVID-journey.

2) Canada (1169), Iran (3186) and the UK (2619) had their highest number of new cases yesterday. Montreal and specifically Quebec are slowly becoming the epicentre of the pandemic in Canada — mostly due to an earlier March Break meant many travellers were coming back home at the worst time possible (read more here).

3) Canada will pass South Korea’s case curve sometime today and passed their death curve three days ago. It is reasonable to suggest that Canada is not handling the virus as well as South Korea (I know that’s a total Captain Obvious line — but now with hard data to back it up!)

4) Canada also passed the UK’s case curve a few days ago, but given that Canada is still way behind in the number of deaths (89 vs. 335 on Day #19), I’m going to assume that’s due to the heightened focus on testing in Canada, which is welcome.

Chinese Data

All the Chinese data that you see here and most sources are based on what the Chinese government releases. I’ve listed reports of the growing sentiment on the accuracy of that data in my daily updates, which I’ll link here again: here, here, here, and here. There’s a new report to add to that list that you read here which seems to indicate a smaller number of discrepancy — let’s hope it’s true.

I genuinely hope that the discrepancies are small, as a lot of the medical and economic models used by policymakers around the world use the Chinese data extensively. Those medical and economic models can be very sensitive to any significant changes in that Chinese data and ultimately prove the medical and economic responses inadequate.

Firstly, my apologies for skipping yesterday. I spent the day with my oldest daughter moving her out of her room at university, which is a couple of hours away. As you likely know, university campuses in Canada are shut down until the end of the academic year.

Since we are further into this pandemic now, I will focus on the fatality rates more so than confirmed cases as deaths are a more tangible measure of how the virus is trending. As we all know now, case counts are highly dependent on test rates.

I have also included a per million population version of the daily death curves. So far, I haven’t normalized for population in my analysis. I felt that it gave a false sense of security to the larger countries and a false sense of panic to the smaller ones. For instance, the US would’ve looked pretty good for the last couple of weeks on a per capita basis, but it wasn’t. Having said that, as we near the peaks in a number of the countries, I think the normalized view can help us truly appreciate the severity of the impact Covid-19 is having on a particular country and help envision the future. Let’s assume the numbers out of China are correct and that they will be able to contain the virus going forward. I think it would be reasonable to assume that China’s recovery is going to look fairly different than Italy or Spain’s, given the significantly lower numbers in relation to their population.

We’ll start with the Cases vs Deaths and the daily death curves like we did in the last update. Charts after my notes.

1) Spain had it’s highest deaths on record two days in a row — 832 and 838.

2) Italy, on the other hand, had two days of declines — 887 and 758 vs. the peak of 971 three days ago. Authorities in Italy had been predicting that they were past the peak over the last week. Unfortunately, they have had two days of declines in the past — but let’s hope this one sticks.

3) The US had it’s the highest number of fatalities on Saturday with 484, and then 318 on Sunday. Despite the one day drop, most experts agree we are not close to the peak for the US yet (source, source).

4) Canada had seven and one death on Saturday and Sunday, after their peak of 14 deaths on Friday. However, there seem to be some irregularities in the counts of ICU patients in Ontario (largest province), which may surprise us later.

5) The UK (209), France (292) and Iran (123) had a higher number of fatalities on Sunday vs Saturday but no significant movements there just yet.

6) Germany had 64 deaths on Saturday and 66 on Sunday and still has a low death rate compared to many other countries. Here are some good articles on the reasons, but a key difference with Germany has been their ability to test a lot and test early. Let me know if you’ve seen any others (source, source, source).

7) The encouraging news is that the 7-day daily growth rate is declining for all listed countries for 2 days in a row. Too early too call for some of those countries like Spain and the US — but encouraging nonetheless.

Here are the daily fatality curves for each country on one chart.

And the 7-day Compounded Daily Growth Rate (CDGR) for deaths.

Cases

1) France (4611), Iran (3076) and the US (19979) had their highest number of new cases on Saturday and a slight decline on Sunday.

2) Across the globe, one in five of the confirmed cases are now in the US (143000 vs 715000).

Daily Covid-Insights and Charts — March 30 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’ll start with Cases & Deaths, the total and the 7-Day Compounded Daily Growth Rate (CDGR)for fatalities.

Deaths

1) The UK (181), Canada (14), the US (411), Spain (769), Germany (72), and Italy (971) had their highest number of deaths on record yesterday.

2) China’s highest number of deaths on record for a single day was 254 on February 12th.

3) Since deaths are a more tangible metric that cases, I’ve charted each country’s daily fatality counts below so that we get a clearer picture of how each country’s death curve is shaping. I’ve seen these individualized charts side-by-side for cases, but not for deaths, so I thought I’d create them. The chart below the individual charts is all tracked countries on one chart.

Daily deaths for each country:

4) Even without normalizing for population, we can see that most western countries have not been able to flatten the curve anywhere as well as China.

5) Although the US had a new high in terms of deaths in a single day, the 7-day growth rate (CDGR) actually went down. Let’s hope that it’s the start if a trend.

And here are the case count trends from yesterday.

Cases

1) As widely covered in the press, the US recorded 18,695 new cases yesterday, which was a new high, exceeding a total of 100,000 cases. The US has the most recorded cases of Covid-19 for the second day in a row.

2) The UK had it’s highest number of new cases yesterday as well, with 2885 vs. 2129. The UK seems to have a flatter curve than most other European countries, which is encouraging.

3) Germany had its highest number of new cases yesterday, too, with 6294 cases. Their total cases will surpass 50,000 today.

4) The 7-day Compounded Daily Growth Rate (CDGR) continues to decline for most countries.

I think one of the most significant developments yesterday was the announcement of a portable 5-minute Covid-19 test that might be available as early as next week. This can truly be a game changer in how we first contain and isolate the virus and what the new normal looks like.

Daily Covid-Insights and Charts — March 28 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let’s start with the cases vs. deaths and the total case count charts.

1) The US, Italy, Germany, Spain, the UK, Iran and France all had more new cases yesterday than the day before. The US, Spain, Iran, France and the UK also had their all-time highs. Although it’s good to keep an eye on the absolute numbers of cases, the overall growth trend in new cases is more meaningful. So here’s the 7-day compounded daily growth rate (CDGR) of new cases. If you’re familiar with CAGR, CDGR is the daily version of that. See note at the bottom on how I calculate it.

2) The 7-day Compounded Daily Growth Rate of new cases declined for all countries, including the US. Please do note that the number of new cases is entirely dependent on how many tests are conducted. We know now that most countries have test shortages, and they tighten the criteria to be tested as the virus spreads. There is a good chance that this decline in case growth is misleading. A more tangible metric for how Covid-19 is trending in a country is the number of deaths. The one thing to remember about deaths is that it is a laggard indicator, meaning it’s showing us how the virus was trending a week to two weeks ago. So here is the total deaths and the 7-day death CDGR for each country.

3) Germany, France, Iran and the UK had higher fatalities than the day before, which were also their all-time highs. We saw a modest decline in the US (246 vs. 249).

4) The 7-day death CDGR is declining for all countries listed here, except for the US. It has been steadily increasing for the US since they hit 150 cases. It is different behaviour than how it’s trended for other countries once they hit 150 cases. A possible explanation could be that there were deaths that were not recorded as Covid-19 over the first 2–3 weeks. I’m not suggesting any foul play here, just that Covid-19 was not really on the most people’s radar in the US, and given that the Covid-19 fatality rate is much higher for the elderly, their deaths could’ve been attributed to old age, pneumonia etc. If you’ve seen any sources about this or have any suggestions, please let me know!

Yesterday, I had provided a very rough back of the envelope framework for estimating how long lockdowns could last and used the US as an example. A friend of mine shared this great 538 article that cited a very recent survey of 20 actual experts (unlike yours truly) and had some pretty insightful results. You can find the article here and download the actual survey results here. A question in the survey was when the experts expected hospitalizations to peak, which could also indicate the peak of the pandemic. According to the survey, there’s a 69% chance the peak will fall between May and August. Some of the experts’ responses to the survey had fairly broad ranges, which I found concerning. Another development yesterday was that Neil Ferguson, the UK scientist behind the Imperial London projections that were fairly catastrophic (estimating 2.2M deaths in the US), significantly revised down his estimates. You can read about that here. There is also increasing skepticism of the accuracy of the case and death data coming from China — especially the hardest-hit Wuhan region. The sentiment seems to be that the actual numbers are a lot higher than official figures. I’ve shared a few of those stories on my daily posts before (here and here). Here’s the latest, which is about the number of urns not matching the official fatality count.

So we are seeing a wide range of responses from the experts, significant changes in projections in a matter of days, and declining confidence in the Chinese data that a lot of the western countries are trying to model their responses after. My takeaway from all this is we still know very little, a lot more ambiguity awaits us, and it’s too early to let our guard down.

Note — How I calculate 7-day CDGR:

Taking this method of calculating CAGR but applying to daily.

power(Day 8 total/Day 1 total, 1/7) — 1

So for the US, total deaths yesterday was 1050. beginning total 7 days ago was 150.

power(1050/150, 1/7) — 1 is 32%

Daily Covid-Insights and Charts — March 27 was originally published in Covid-Insights and Analysis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.