COVID-19 Megathread 3: Third time's a charm

[ON Progressive]

Italy is reporting a lower # of new cases. However, they are also reporting fewer tests. Why is testing decreasing? How much of the decrease in cases is due to less testing, and how much is due to the actual # of infections going down?

Mar 30: 23,329 tests, 4,050 new cases
Mar 29: 24,504 tests, 5,217 new cases
Mar 28: 35,447 tests, 5,974 new cases

Maybe positive test rates can give us an idea?
March 28 - 16.85%
March 29 - 21.29%
March 30 - 17.36%

[ON Progressive]

As I wrote before, cfr should be about the same in most western countries, which suggests that Italy already has 1-2 mln cases and US 0.5-1 mln.

That would suggest that Lombardy has already reached ~10-20%.

According to this study, ~10% of Italy population is already infected which would probably translate into ~30% in Lombardy, I suppose.

For Spain it is 15%. Unfortunately, they didn't estimate US #.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1244674754939887616


If it's true, then I think, that the real CFR is way under 1%, perhaps ~0.1-0.5%


The caveat is similar to all the studies of Corona. Uncertainty is huge due to various assumption and lack of data.

Imperial College models are based on a 1% IFR, so trying to claim the "real CFR" is below 1 based on this is wrong.

That being said, the fact the IFR is 1% makes it fairly pessimistic since other places have IFRs well below that.

[ON Progressive]

The updated numbers for COVID-19 in the U.S. are in for 4/1 per: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I'll be keeping track of these updates daily and updating at the end of the day, whenever all states finish reporting for that day. The percentages represent the daily increase from the last report.

3/26:

• Cases: 85,390
• Deaths: ±1,200

3/27:

• Cases: 103,798 (+18,408 | ↑21.56%)
• Deaths: 1,693 (+493 | ↑41.03%)

3/28:

• Cases: 123,428 (+19,630 | ↑18.91%)
• Deaths: 2,211 (+518 | ↑30.60%)

3/29:

• Cases: 142,178 (+18,750 | ↑15.20%)
• Deaths: 2,484 (+273 | ↑12.35%)

3/30:

• Cases: 163,490 (+21,312 | ↑14.99%)
• Deaths: 3,148 (+664 | ↑26.73%)

3/31 (Yesterday):

• Cases: 187,917 (+24,427 | ↑14.94%)
• Deaths: 3,867 (+749 | ↑22.84%)

4/1 (Today):

• Cases: 215,003 (+27,086 | ↑14.41%)
• Deaths: 5,102 (+1,235 | ↑31.94%)

Where are you seeing 1235 fatalities? That worldometers link you have in your post has 1049.

[ON Progressive]

Might I ask, regarding the fatality rate, why we're using deaths per cases (which is rising at a rapid rate at the moment) rather than deaths per cases closed, which puts it at what seems like a more realistic 30-40%?

There is literally no reason to think this has a 30-40% death rate. If it did, we'd have way more dead (although it also likely simply wouldn't have gotten to spread that well anyway, since dead people can't spread disease easily for obvious reasons).