A note from our benefactor about changes to data calculations today:
The charts are slightly different this morning. Due to the inimitable comments of Stormcrow, I have changed the doubling rate to account for compounding. Previously, I was using an arithmetic doubling. This way is more accurate, but but also measurably reduces the doubling time. The exponential function is partly what makes COVID-19 dangerous. I am using the following formula: =Ln(2)/Ln(1+(percent increase), where Ln = natural Log and return the same results as Stormcrow did in his post.
Also, for those of you checking the Johns Hopkins data, it is not identical. I typically pull the data after 8:30 am every day, but remove Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands, because JH does not always include them in the data sets. It’s very hard to include them intermittently.
Again, thanks to Stormcrow for making this better,
gnogknoh
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Jeff Wegerson
I’m preferring the logarithmic graphs.
Using the website inspired by The Financial Times reporter John Burn-Murdoch at http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ I was able to discover that my home state Illinois was tracking exactly like Spain on the cases per million log graphing. I now expect Illinois to peak around 2000 cases per million as Spain is now peaking but eight to ten days ahead of us. The graphs for Illinois and Spain match so well that it almost seems like Illinois is just using theirs and dividing by four to account for the population differences. Even the new cases per million per day match up well.
Aqua Lung
All the hype about a vaccine is just that, hype. It’s propaganda. To excuse and defer the lack of urgency and motivation to contain the virus. There will be no effective vaccine but there may very well be a vaccine that does more harm than good and under the auspices of this pandemic people the world over will be forced to take the vaccine despite its largely untested & dubious efficacy and despite its potential lethality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVBc7-Te_yA
Do you really trust these murderers to produce an effective vaccine that helps fight the virus versus one that will murder even more people than the virus itself, all things considered? I don’t. Call me crazy, but I happen to think and believe those who are proven mass murders are indeed mass murderers. Mass murders do as mass murderers do. They murder en masse.
The irony of Vietnam weathering this storm with a simple approach. Let’s not forget, the Vietnam War was a war of aggression by America on the people of Vietnam which resulted in the murder of a sizable percentage of their adult population. Its current population is the progeny of those murdered and they are licking this pandemic just as they kicked America’s ass fifty years prior. With stamina and resolve using the simplest of methods.
America, and the West, is/are being hoisted by their own murderous petard.
Jeff Wegerson
Here’s my twitter thread with my overlaid graphed comparisons
https://mobile.twitter.com/JWegerson/status/1245197533187579905
(Oops. Hope it links ok on non mobile devices)
Jace
Are there or have there ever been any working or viable SARS-MERS-common cold vaccines?
Ian Welsh
You can have vaccines for particular strands, the problem is that the cold mutates too fast. The theory is that Covid-19 doesn’t. If that’s true, then we can have vaccines (probably have to make new ones every year like the flu.) If not, we can’t.
Or that’s my understanding, certainly could be wrong.
Jace
Thank you, Ian. The internet is oversaturated with glosses, opinions and blurbs on the subject. Seems there are trials beginning on Australia, the Netherlands, England and maybe China. But, caveat: insufficient data. And low success rates, historically.
NR
Aqua Lung: You can’t just say “there will be no effective vaccine,” you can’t possibly know that. We are able to vaccinate effectively against the flu and many other diseases. It’s possible that COVID will be different, but that is by no means as certain as you are claiming.
Aqua Lung
No, we are not. As Ian indicates, it’s a moving target. The virologist in that video, if you care to review it, indicates in all likelihood this virus has mutated already, hence Italy’s experience. I have no doubt every government right now is lying to some extent about all of this. Some governments are lying more and worse than others. We do know this much. Such draconian measures as have been taken by China would not have been taken if this isn’t deadly serious and for real. This is not like SARS or MERS. The virologist in the video is stunned by this virus’s behavior. He cannot explain it. It doesn’t act like any other virus he’s studied.
China is as addicted to growth as is America, so it’s not in its best interests to shut the country down or even parts of it unless it’s dire. For these measures to have been taken by both China and America to a much more limited extent indicates this is far worse than what we know or will probably ever know.
Watch the video. No, there has not been an effective vaccine for SARS or MERS and vaccines for the flu are likened to chasing your tail and remember, there is no Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand that is going to accommodate this. Who’s going to pay for it? Wall Street? Fat chance. Trump’s government? Fat chance.
If you watch the video, high tech pharma companies in South Korea during the heat of the prior SARS and MERS crisis lined up to receive public and private funding to create a vaccine and then when the crisis died down and it’s off to the next crisis and the news cycle changes, the vaccines never got developed.
So, there are two hurdles. The virus is a moving target and the development process is deficient without proper accountability safeguards implemented to ensure completion & efficacy.
Benjamin
The number of dead seems to have gone up by a couple of hundred just in the few hours since this was posted. It’s really starting to steamroll now.
Benjamin
@Aqua Lung
“Let’s not forget, the Vietnam War was a war of aggression by America on the people of Vietnam which resulted in the murder of a sizable percentage of their adult population. Its current population is the progeny of those murdered and they are licking this pandemic just as they kicked America’s ass fifty years prior.”
It was really much more than that. They first kicked the French’s ass, then the Americans, then ended the Cambodian genocide, then fought both Thailand and China to a draw.
Zachary Smith
Headline: Navy to Relieve ‘Hero’ Captain Who Urged Help for 100 Sailors With Coronavirus: Report
I’m just guessing, of course, but I suspect this Captain informed his bosses of the massive and growing Coronavirus disaster on the aircraft carrier he commanded and was told to shut up. At this point he would have had to decide between his own career, or the welfare of the men and women under his command. When Crozier wrote and leaked the letter, he KNEW he was done in the Navy.
The guy who fired him? An “acting” Secretary of the Navy whose previous experience was working in a huge Accounting firm. And no doubt an accomplished ass-kisser. Especially of the Stable Genius Trump. How else would he have gotten (and retained) such plum job? Needless to say, HE didn’t feel the need to resign instead of firing the Captain.
https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2020/04/navy-to-relieve-hero-captain-who-urged-help-for-100-sailors-with-coronavirus-report/