Coronavirus : Update 4 from the Epicenter

Posted by in Coronavirus

For anyone still wondering if Italy is a special case, underprepared, slow to respond, or just unlucky, I have two graphs for you that I prepared using data from here.

The first chart shows the cumulative daily totals in the countries where family and friends live. It appears to show 4 countries experiencing apparently starkly different epidemics :

In the second chart I offset each curve by the number of days of delay between the explosion in Italy and the corresponding uptick in each country. Gone are the differences. It doesn’t matter where you live, it’s the same trend :

You may be interested to know how many days difference there are. The UK has been saying that it is “4 weeks behind Italy”, but the offsets in my charts show considerably smaller gaps :

As the experts have been pointing out, we can effect those curves – as Korea and Singapore have shown, but the longer you wait, the stronger the foothold, and the higher the numbers will climb before they begin to attenuate. Italy began the lockdown on February 21st (24 days ago… which is considerably longer than the curve offsets above), expanding to a countrywide quarantine on March 9th (7 days ago). You can see the whole timeline here.

Meanwhile, other countries should try to avoid making stupid announcements that force people into airports :

Washington Dulles Airport, yesterday…