March 23: good news and bad news

Some tentative "good" news and some ... not so good. A few posts ago I showed a graph of a model of the daily new cases predicted in Italy. The graph shows new cases beginning to decrease on Mar 18. It was then revised to March 23. The model is shown again here with the actual data, that tracks it pretty well. If this holds up it means two important things: 1) they are finally on their way to "flattening the curve" (the graph needs to get down to 0, and 2) the assumptions about the main modes of spread of the virus are correct, and the "stay home" and closure measures (enacted about 3 weeks ago) are working. What's not so good? Look at the third graph. It shows the number of cases as they increased in different countries. South Korea (brown) was ready with testing and strong immediate containment measures. Italy (red graph) obviously screwed up somewhere (in spite of what I saw as quick strong measures... but that's another story). US is grey. You can try your own guess as to where this is going.










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