Im nervous about this shutdown working. As Ive bored everyone with already, I have been tracking the confirmed cases mathematically since 10/03/20. It has been growing exponentially at a terrifyingly steady rate.
Exponential simply means that each data set is growing by a multiple on the last one. When I started tracking it was growing at an exponential multiplier of 1.23. Since then the multiplier has barely moved and totals I forecast over a week ago are accurate each day +/- 10 or so. Its scary to me how constant the rate of growth is.
Here is the table of the confirmed cases
OVer the last week the multiplier for each day has been 1.20, 1.25, 1.25, 1.23, 1.25, 1.23 and 1.26 today. It just doesnt change.
To give you an idea of how critical this multiplier number is, when I started the forecast on the 10th Mar , the forecast total for 10 April was 77, 326. If it continues at todays multiplier of 1.26, the total on 10 April will be 119,149. If we can keep it at 1.2 it would drop to 48,000. It makes a massive difference, but so far it wont budge.
Here is a graph of the multiplier
We need that line to dip below 1.0 urgently but so far no sign of it. Lets hope in a week or so these new arrangements start to filter through to this data.
What are your thoughts on the recovery rate against the multiplier?
It seems to take a long time to recover which looks like it will eventually create a backlog? I.e. even if we get to under 1, we'll still be in a bit of trouble in the short/medium term.
The recovery numbers have me stumped tbh. It doesnt make sense. All reports have been that for the 80%+ of cases that dont require hospitalisation (95%+ in Aus), its a mild illness that you are over in less than 2 weeks. There are only 13 people in hospital in Australia with COVID but our reported recoveries are only 118 out of 1800. Doesnt make sense and seems to be the same thing worldwide in reporting.
I dont get it.
Could it be that new cases are arriving faster than recoveries? If it takes 14 days to recover and only hours to discover a newly infectEd patient. Is that the correlation you’re questioning?
Ah yes you are on it of course. It actually does make sense. I was simply thinking it doesnt make sense that only 118 cases are reported as recovered out of 1800 but I wasnt taking into consideration that 14 days ago there were only 112 cases, so now that does start to make sense.
So, not many “recovering” based on the symptoms listed and an unknown period of time that people may be contagious for? Sounds like a pretty bad trend for us to be following...
Problem is the numbers are becoming quite consistent in most places - people are very sick.
The mild cases, IMO, must make up only %60 yet for some reason even they aren’t being listed as recovering cases yet. Seems to me that the initial word on this was right & consistent criteria for testing may be an issue - believe we may have been exposed for a lot longer - and shortages
Being in HK, we were watching the Wuhan data really closely. It took a long time for the recovery data to catch-up to the infections. It felt like at least a couple of weeks where it was 1:1 with the death rate.
Recovery doesn't have to do with if you're on the path to healthiness, it will be when you're fully recovered from the virus. Mild or not.
That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, who (pardon the pun) knows of WHO and whether other cooperating organisations are all using the same testing *method* and criteria... I.e, mild people, who have now recovered without even being tested... seems to me there’s far more grave data!
I dont think that is the cause of the weird status of the recovered cases. I think it is mathematical. Due to the nature of exponential growth, as it goes forward, numbers grow huge quickly, exponentially. So where the sick people are on the curve and the deaths, is at the peak, in the present, but the recoveries are in the past when it comes to the exponential curve so they will be exponentially small relative to the curve, as the cases grow.
As an example, if I look at my mathematical forcecast that Ive put together at today, we have 1800 cases, but 14 days ago we had 112 cases, so if recovery time is about 14 days, then the reported recovery cases of 118 looks about right. If I look to the future on my forecast, 14 days from now, we would have 39248 cases, but only probably 2000 recoveries because that is how many had it 14 days earlier.
This is borne out elsewhere in the world. The basketcase that everyone worries about, Italy currently has 64000 cases. 14 days ago they had 7375 cases. Today they are reporting recoveries as 7432. That is a pretty accurate parallel.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/covid19-coronavirus-countries-infection-trajectory/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/monkeys-cannot-get-reinfected-with-coronavirus-study.html
Or for example, that human error plays a role, which is much more likely than maths here.
Clearly the monkey’s remained infectious for up to 28 days and did not display many symptoms until this progressed to mild/moderate viral pneumonia... seems self explanatory.
Given that estimates have upto 95% of cases being mild and ‘quick recoveries’ it is now become obvious that that’s most probably a reflection of best case ESTIMATE, and are therefore reflected by a margin of error that is down to many factors.
Seems to be getting more serious on the daily - and this obviously renders any constantly changing mathematical gradient(?) useless. For the time being, this is quite obvious to me..?
