COVID Update for 6/10

It's been a while since the last update. We're several weeks into reopening the country for business with some mixed results. 

The US has far and away the most COVID cases in the world and is still growing. 

 Some of this can be explained from our relative population.  When we adjust for population,  we're not so extreme, but our curve isn't nearly as flat as most other countries at this point.

Another explanation is the amount of testing we're doing.  We have tested many more people than any other country -- over 21 Million to date and averaging about 450,000 per day. 

As countries test more and social distancing has more time to work the rate of positive tests has dropped significantly.  However, the positive testing rate for the US has not dropped as much as moth other countries, and seems to have levelled off despite an increase in testing that should have resulted in a lower positive test %.

We have just past our 100th day on the common timeline (days since we had > 100 cases).  Nearly all the European countries I'm tracking are below 1% by this time, but we're still around 5%.  One explanation could be that its the effect of flattening the curve.  Some of the other countries had higher spikes that overwhelmed their health care systems where the US only saw these major spikes in a couple cities.  When you flatten the curve, it doesn't necessarily mean you get fewer COVID cases, just that you're spreading them out over a longer period.  Another possible explanation is the reopening -- You can see the downward trend in the US seems to level off about the time we started to relax the social distancing restrictions. 

One last note is that in this graph you can also see where Chile's curve is moving the opposite direction, indicating a large increase in COVID cases there.  When we break down countries by North, Central, and Southern regions, the earlier trend of Northern countries seeing much more COVID growth continues with a few exceptions.

Nearly all the countries we're tracking in tropical zones and the southern hemisphere remain relatively flat compared to the North American and European countries.  For their population, Chile is seeing very concerning growth.   While I'm not tracking many other South American countries,  Peru also has had a large outbreak and Brazil has one of the highest case counts for COVID in the world -- though less then half of Chile's cases per population. It may be that Chile's winter climate is driving the growth, but not that Chile's Eastern neighbor Argentina, which has very similar climate, still has a relatively mild COVID situation. 

Looking more at US Trends,  its clear that we are well past our peak COVID daily case and mortality rates. 

According to my COVID Status sheet, we're 49 days past our peak death date and 28 days since our peak case date.

In my last post, I noted how the number of COVID recoveries are underreported in most countries.  Using a 21 day recovery period,  we should have almost 1.5M COVID recoveries -- nearly 3/4 of the 2 Million cases reported.  This graph shows how the actual number of active cases is only 22% of that total 2M number.

Stay tuned.  Tomorrow, I plan to post an update on North Carolina.