[Edwina Lee (OP)]

This topic is for tracking and understanding the COVID-19 corona virus statistics.
Here are the best statistics sources I have found:-
[1] https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports
[2] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/                           (daily updated global statistics: WHO based)
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus                                    (stresses on statistical interpretation: US based)
[4] http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/                                         (lag time for each country graphs: WHO based)
[5] http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/news/TrackingtheEpidemic.htm     (statistics of every day in China: [overloading])

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

It would be nice to be able see statistical graphs for every country on the web, especially the ones that are expected to explode in numbers.  Please post a URL on here and give brief explanation when you find a regularly updated source. Thanks.

[chris]

Good idea, although the references you've posted above are the ones I currently look at myself.

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

Quite significant delay in WHO's situation reports. CNN and WorldoMeters.com are reporting > 100,000 confirmed cases by Friday night 2020-03-27, but WHO report 67 is still on 68,334 cases.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/28/politics/what-matters-march-27/index.html

[acsinuk]

Who is to blame for panicking the politicians into taking such over to top measures as an economic lockdown which is causing huge hardship to the poor and exploding unemployment; which will lead to rampant inflation while it lasts.
Enough is enough, overreacting to Health and Safety caution has landed us in a total mess.  Let God decide who is to live and who is to die and not statisticians, medical opinions, scare mongering about insufficient  ventilators or other human risks.
You are alive now but at risk of dying at any time; so it is up to you to be responsible for keeping yourself safe and those around you.  This means keeping yourself normally at least a meter or 2 from other people where possible when you go out to work or shopping. This is in fact good advise whether there is a virus around or not in my opinion.

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

Healthcare experts stay away from talking about the practicalities of having the disease, and stay in safe territory of arguments using death rate.  Politicians have more considerations to take into account.
Trump's main concern is to beat China by economics & lies, & the tactic of doubt crafted by his brilliant strategist Steve Bannon. So he wants to belittle the infected & the deaths, hide the statistics by not testing & not collecting adequately, and carry on the normal economy. Without testing, deaths can be ascribed to seasonal flu, for example. If he lose this election, he is toast, and he'll be subject to all kinds of threats currently shielded by presidential power, previleges & cronyism. Johnson will become an unwilling pawn drifting in a storm that he has no control.

The serious practicalities of the disease is that it is very infectious and re-infection is very common and easy.
A healthy person can acquire resistance to it, then lose the resistance in a short while. When he is weak say after over work or exposed to severe weather, then suddenly, he can be infected and can deteriorate rapidly to acquire the full blown infection.   Just look at how many nurses and doctors get seriously infected, and many died as a result.  Doctors & nurses are generally strong and careful.

Tell me. Can a company really survive with so much serious infections about?

In the time a population eventually acquire herd resistance (if it ever happens), it will be 2 years or more, while the millions of bodies are piled high for cremation & burial. How will politicians survive? They would have to blame someone, something to deflect blame from their own incompetence and murderous agenda.

[syhprum]

Clever politicians who are QCs can usually run rings round investigating committees that seem to be run by armatures 

[acsinuk]

Have a look at the stats    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Scare statistics but what it omits to mention is that EVERYONE is going to be infected in the end and out of around 75 million infected people in Italy 14,000 have die leaving 74,986,000 still alive but 76,000 in hospital which is the real problem. Government should not do a nanny state lockdown; just advise the public it is in their own interest to avoid physical contact and particularly those with existing illness as you cannot necessarily be admitted to hospital if they fall ill. Older people will probably self isolate.    WE WANT % FACTS NOT PANICS   Sorry to shout but its important.

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

The long term consequences of the virus is not known.  If the long term consequences is serious, then no nation can afford to have majority or the whole population infected. Thus, it is a risk which must be avoided.

People's life time habits are not going to change to fight an enemy they can't see. This is why the state must assert its influence& power to save its population. 

[acsinuk]

Look at the cruise ship Diamond Princess as a reference point. The ship has about 2500 passengers and 1000 crew.  By now  all of these passengers will probably been infected but only 700 odd have fallen ill.  We can assume the remainder had a mild dose of the virus and survived it.
So the virus will on average cause illness in 712/3500*100=20% of the population of which the stats say 11 died.  Thus the virus will kill about 3 people per 1,000 most of them elderly.   
Note panic lockdowns will not affect the numbers who die but only extend the period over which they become infected thus relieving the health service beds fitted with ventilators.

[vhfpmr]

Johns Hopkins Uni is publishing a database updated daily which can be cut & pasted into Excel
https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

[acsinuk]

Yes, these stats are good and show that most of Europe and UK peaked 3 days ago.  So although the USA will have other peaks as their large cities peak the rest of Europe can start to relax internally and get back to work but avoiding personal contact where possible and remaining within their local area if possible. To avoid foreigners bringing in the virus, a strict procedure of border health checks should be introduced where suspected people are immediately sent to isolation first aid area but normal passengers are issued with 2 masks dated and a packet of sanitized wipes for which they sign agreeing to self isolate for 14 days and instructed to always wear the mask and wipe anything  they touch outside their home isolate area

[acsinuk]

Second thoughts on the health officers check on arriving passengers at airport or docks is that each passenger should be issued with 2 masks [dated], a pair of rubber gloves and 2 tiny flannelette sanitized baby wipes. The health officer should insist that the mask, gloves are put on immediately and baby wipe used to wipe the pen and his counter.  He shall inform the person that these items cannot be removed until they reach their permanent self-isolating room/mobile home. On the way home; any public door handle, water tap, safety rail etc must be wiped after they have touched it.

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

Those covid-19 statistics are only good at telling us in a sketchy way how well individual countries are coping with the infection.
Based on that, we can guess which countries are safe to be, when they are likely to relax their distancing measures.

As for how serious is covid-19 if we let it loose, this MSNBC video illustrates it very well:-
 

[acsinuk]

The video is OK for routine low risk work but we are in a fight for our rights to live a normal life. We cant waste time testing vaccines???  The government must work for the good of the people; not try and be safe dont blame me attitude!!  They are meant to be leaders and issue an edict that pharmacy companies can call on fully informed retired medical profession volunteers to test its latest vaccine and not fear legal prosecution.
Children must be allowed back to school as they are at minimum risk anyway but keep a save distance apart where possible and the same should apply to manufacturing, shop and office/warehouse workers.  Those staff that need to serve  customers directly should be provided with windows with voice boxes [ like banks] and gloves to prevent physical contact immediately.  The NHS staff that contact the virus should be given absolute priority to the use of hospital ventilators if they catch the virus but no panic releasing of other NHS staff other than those who touched them unprotected physically during their work at the hospital.
 

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

acsinuk,  the WHO considers that no country is in a position to get back to complete normality at this moment.
We still do not know much about this virus, so we can't make plans to recover based on assumptions which may be invalid.
Too much is at stake for the whole world or a large country to make the wrong move, so we just need to lock down to slow the speed of infection so that hospitals can cope, and hopefully establish important facts which may help us return to normality by adaptation or via vaccines or via medical treatments.

[acsinuk]

Hi Edwina,   Take a look at    https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/  and look at the births today and compare with the deaths today.  If this were a serious pandemic we would surely see that deaths outnumbered births but they do not!!!!!.
WHO should immediately revise their definition of a pandemic and tie it to the stats not panic everyone unnecessarily.  Had they looked at the Diamond Princess stats they could have predicted what would happen and these were available before the UK locked down.

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

You are enaged in 1-dimensional thinking. It isn't just about death rate.
Consider these aspects:-
[1] Can an economy get back to normal when you have piles of dead bodies in every town and city. People don't spend and produce much when they are saddled by mourning of so many friends and relatives dying;
[2] The virus has nasty long term effects which we still do not understand; Can society cope with so many people in bad long term  health?
[3] Can you feel safe when you know that 1 in 5 in the office has the virus and you might seccomb to it much like you succumb to a common cold whenever you get tired, cold, or old?
I am sure people can think of a long list of probems we have no answers for, and we don't yet know how we should deal with the practicalities.
We are far from being able to get back to where we were before. Years away is my best guess!

[acsinuk]

The virus will kill about 3 people per 1,000 and 90% of those will be elderly or have chronic problems.  So of the people of working age and children it will kill 3 in 10,000 people. So politicians should do what is for the common good and get back to normal by getting the kids back to school, allow marriages  funerals and allow people to use their common sense regarding social distancing but leave it to God to decided who will live and who will die.

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

The reason why the death rate is so small is that the infection rate has been controlled so that it does not grow exponentially anymore. Once the serious cases exceed hospital capacity to treat them, then death rate goes right up because untreated serious cases end up dying. That would be about 2.5%.

You are also assuming that herd immunity will be achieved. We never got herd immunity from the black plague, small pox, ebola, malaria for example. 
We don't know much about the side effects of covid-19, but we are trying to discovering who gets ill and who don't,  .  .  .  This may eventually tell us how best to deal with covid-19.
But now, we simply cannot ignore covid-19.