A Tale of Two Worlds

When Can We Hit Reboot? Pt. 9

by Patrick H. Ruane and Ravi Pamnani, Jun 24, 2020

This is an ongoing series to try to make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic trajectory and try to project its course through various data visualizations. Find the previous post here (Part 8).

Is 2020 the new Year Zero? Will BC now refer to “Before Coronavirus” and PP refer to “Post Pandemic”. 9/11 certainly changed the way we live in the modern world, but we suspect many will forget coronavirus and still date our calendars by reference to their imaginary friend. The reason we think this is based on the data; the world appears to be largely broken into two groups, those who take the pandemic seriously and those who don’t.

We have illustrated this in previous posts when comparing, for example USA to Vietnam (see Part 7, Fig. 9). It may take a second SARS-CoV-2 wave or an inevitable second pandemic (SARS-CoV-3 or MERS-CoV-2) to knock some sense into those who have politicized this terrible disease for their own purposes; but rest assured, the world will change, and we as a species can easily deal with it. The economy will change (improve as it always does), there will be less traffic, less air travel, more Work From Home and Zoom calls, less handshakes and hugs and more fist bumps.

Glimmer of Hope?

Let’s look at the current data (Figure 1). First off, there was a glimmer of hope… right up until last week. Globally the number of new reported cases for the prior 3 weeks had held steady between 800K and 900K — with last week seeing a sudden uptick.

Is this an anomaly, or is it the beginning of the so-called “Second Wave”? We suspect that a few of the most populous countries that have mismanaged the pandemic (US, Brazil, India, maybe Russia) are driving the growth in new cases. As we approach 10 million global cases, this is actually still a small fraction of the world population (approximately 0.13%) in the grand scheme of thing. A true “Second Wave” could be 10–100 times worse, or there might not be a Second Wave at all. No one knows.

Figure 1. Second Wave or Hiccup?

Two Worlds

In previous posts we have reported how well Australia, Oceania and East Asia have dealt with this crisis. They were not only able to turn the curve, but crush the curve. They were successful because of Policy:

• Social Distancing
• Wearing Masks
• Hygiene
• Contract Tracing
• Accurate Reporting
• And most importantly — not sticking their heads in the sand.

Europe didn’t do quite so well and have paid the price in many unnecessary deaths. We can illustrate this by comparing two islands (DUQ and Ireland). They differ in population by approximately 1 order of magnitude (10X), yet today the DUQ is still reporting 100X more cases per day than Ireland (Figure 2). This is because of good government policy in Ireland and sensible, responsible action on the part of the citizens. We can’t blame the British subjects as there is little they can do when the government policy is so toxic, which it is.

Figure 2. DUQ and Ireland both have Covid-19 under control but with significantly higher caseload in DUQ.

We should also take a look at Sweden in relation to its neighbors. The Swedish government claims it is somewhat hampered by its constitution in setting public health policy (we suspect they won’t be next time). Clearly they got it wrong, yet still there are some in Sweden who deny they got it wrong. These people — like two of my conservative friends (Frick & Frack) — suffer from a bad case of the Dunning-Kruger effect (Figure 3).

Figure 3. John Cleese, pre-eminent scholar of stupidity.

Sweden has about 2X the populations of Finland, Norway or Denmark, but today Sweden is still reporting approximately 50X more daily cases (Figure 4), and the number of cases is now rising in Sweden — intervention by the government is needed.

Figure 4. Iceland leads the pack in controlling Covid-19 in Scandinavia.

The Middle East is a mixed bag (Figure 5), kudos to Israel and UAE, they have things under control (though Israel is seeing a recent uptick that is concerning). Most others appear to have or are about to turn the corner. But what is Saudi Arabia doing opening up everything this week? (Is Jared Kushner advising them?)

Figure 5. Middle East Covid-19 prevalence vs. new cases.

We recognize that not all countries have the luxury of implementing broad government public health policies, indeed when we look at the Indian subcontinent (Figure 6), Africa (Figure 7), and South and North/Central America (Figure 8, Figure 9), the picture looks grim in many places. We suspect these will continue to rise for some time as Pandora’s box has already been opened there, but we are hopeful that simple steps like wearing masks will limit the number of deaths.

Figure 6. Indian Subcontinent Covid-19 prevalence vs. new cases.

Figure 7. Africa Covid-19 prevalence vs. new cases.

Figure 8. South America Covid-19 prevalence vs. new cases.

Figure 9. North (and Central) America Covid-19 prevalence vs. new cases.

The Dis-United States of America

Many of us may have seen the following plot reported in the NYT and WP earlier this week (Figure 10). This is saying that Trump Republicans are bad for your health! Act accordingly and ostracize those who don’t take this disease seriously. We expect this trend to continue as long as the minions of The Screaming Carrot Demon show up to hear the Emptysburg Address on how to walk down a ramp and drink a glass of water at Coughchella.

Figure 10. New Cases by 2018 Presidential Vote (NYTimes/WaPo)

The USA is clearly divided now (Figure 11), here we can see 6 states leading the way (CA, NC, TX, FL, GA and AZ), things are getting worse and the hoi polloi are going back to “normal”. We should point out that the CA numbers are being mainly driven by SoCal (80% of cases).

Figure 11. Worst-performing states in the Union.

States that lean Democratic have turned the curve (Figure 12)— look for yourselves.

Figure 12. States with best Covid-19 control in US.

We looked at the number of cases reported in the past 7 days and compared both groups (Figure 13), we expect this trend to continue for several weeks, those States that are now mandating the wearing of masks in public will most likely see a rapid improvement (CA has recently implemented this, so we hope to get back in the Blue corner soon).

Figure 13. Average number of new Covid-19 cases per week. Error bars are 1 SD.

And finally we leave you with the following graph (Figure 14) that has been making the rounds over the past few weeks.

Figure 14. Some things never change (caffeine).

This is part of an ongoing series of data visualizations of the Covid-19 pandemic. Part 10 was published on Jul 20, 2020.