In Perspective: Coronavirus by the numbers

I have always been fascinated by numbers, so looking at data on the virus spread and its lethality is revealing, and also raises lots of questions I cannot answer, since I am not a virologist, nor am I on top of what each country is doing to contain the spread of the virus. There are several very good sources of information on the numbers if this interests you.

A 17-year-old prodigy from Seattle has created an excellent database, which updates every minute. Here is an article on the young software designer. Johns Hopkins University, recipient of the largest gift ever made by one person to a university (Michael Bloomberg’s gift of $1.8 billion) also has good data.

The country by country information, especially when examined over time, suggests that there are some disparities. First: incidence rate, that is, the number of cases compared to a country’s population. This virus began in China, and grew rapidly there, particularly in one area of the country, but case volume now has leveled off with very small growth in the caseload, and well over half recovered. This is encouraging, or should be; it suggests containment is possible.

Now, of course, an authoritarian country has tools at its disposal democracies do not. In any case, China has a total caseload of 80,000 that has been quite steady for a few weeks. China has a population of 1.4 billion. In other words, 1 in every 17,000 Chinese have come down with the disease. Obviously, the incidence rate in the Wuhan area is higher than the national incidence rate in China -- maybe more than 25 times higher. This is also the area where the disease spread rapidly since almost nobody early on knew what they were dealing with.

Well, In China, about 25,000 die every day (9 million a year). The great majority of those who die every year in both countries are older people. The virus added about 50 deaths per day in China for two months.

Italy has just over 1,000 deaths a day from all causes. In the past few weeks, that number has grown by close to 50 per day from the virus.

In other words, the Wuhan area of China experienced the same supplemental death toll from the virus for about 60 days that Italy has now experienced for close to two weeks.

It is understandable why Italy has chosen a quarantine type approach for the entire country, as case volumes grow, and the death toll climbs.

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