Ernie Dainow's Blog

BC comes even cleaner than the US and the rest of Canada — it expects the novel coronavirus pandemic will continue to impact daily life until the summer, followed by a potential second wave of the virus in the fall.
https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/covid-19-likely-part-of-b-c-life-until-summer-says-dr-henry-five-more-deaths 

I don’t think you will see a similar admission from US health authorities, until just before their April 30 deadline, when they will announce another extension.

Dr Fauci mentioned “a glimmer of hope” based a decline in the number of new cases reported recently. It would be nice to see that on a graph. It’s a real simple graph but I couldn’t find any. I uploaded a spreadsheet of all the case data into a google spreadsheet and then generated this chart. To be able to compare the US and Canada, I plotted % change in new cases rather than actual number of cases.

This shows US new cases declining by 51% to 15% (March 20 to March 31), but with a bump back up to 25% from March 26-28. You have to get to 0% to see flattening of the curve.This shows what is wrong with reading too much into this data – changes in the number of new cases is erratic. You can especially see this in the spike in Canadian new cases on March 26. This was due to some labs clearing a backlog of Covid-19 tests, which naturally led to more cases being reported than on other days.

Another graph that I have not been able to find is cases by % of total population. All case graphs I have seen plot actual number of cases, which makes it hard to compare countries with very different populations. Here’s the chart, generated from the same spreadsheet.

This shows several interesting things:
– The US is on a similar trajectory as Italy. Canada is on a lower trajectory.
– US, Canada are about 20 days behind Italy, 10 days behind Spain.
– It doesn’t look like any of these countries are close to flattening the curve yet.

In the US and Canada, health authorities expect the peak in mid April.

US finally comes clean on virus predictions.
– Fatalities could hit more than 2 million without any measures.
– Best case scenario is 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths.  
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dr-deborah-birx-predicts-200-000-deaths-if-we-do-n1171876

Dr. Deborah Birx is finally being allowed to speak. The only person in the Trump administration with any experience dealing with a pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci said she is a “superstar”.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/03/20/dr-deborah-birx-profile-coronavirus-taskforce-marquardt-dnt-newday-vpx.cnn

Better predictions should be coming. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/489774-birx-cautions-against-inaccurate-models-predicting-signficant-coronavirus

The view from here is that if you simply look at the various graphs posted earlier, you can see that the new US deadline April 30 will not reach a peak and a turnaround that would warrant an end to current social distancing measures.

If you want to follow the hockey stick up the curve and watch for any flattening, these are the best updating graphs I have found.

Canada  
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/health-professionals/epidemiological-summary-covid-19-cases.html#a2 

U.S.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103185/cumulative-coronavirus-covid19-cases-number-us-by-day/

This page has an incredible amount of info, graphs and stats https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus#confirmed-covid-19-deaths-by-country

There is a really compact table showing doubling time of deaths by country. You have to scroll down about 12 pages to get to it.
Warning: this is pretty scary.

Here is a very interesting report on the influential study that showed the graph with the second wave (previous blog). It also explains why the UK suddenly changed its policy from one that would develop “herd immunity” to suppression. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/coronavirus-imperial-college-johnson.html

The number of cases in the US have skyrocketed in just a few days, and is now higher than Spain. This trend will probably accelerate.

Canada at 1,328 is also on the exponential “hockey stick”, but the lower number of cases are more manageable for our health care systems, so far.

Highlights of the best info I have found. Not really a lot to read because the graphs tell it all. This is for people who are not afraid of math, statistics and graphs.

I think these graphs really show the whole story which is generally not being reported in the news. People are clinging to the hope that the recent closures (schools, restaurants, …) will flatten the curve and will end after the 3 week period. It’s clear from most countries that started on the Covid-19 path earlier this is pretty unrealistic for Canada.

World map, by country shows how Canada has been on a somewhat lower track than many other countries.

The US is on higher track, approaching Spain and Iran.  

But a detailed Canada graph of total cases by day shows how we have entered real exponential growth. Cases from Mar 15 to 18 have more than doubled, 250 to 569. This sudden change rattled Canadian Health authorities and led to a whole string of closures and other support measures being announced since last Friday. We probably will not stay on the lower track in the previous graph and will follow a path more like Europe.