We are going to start a high-level today and then zoom in. But first, a word on why the total population doesn’t matter.
The population doesn’t matter in the early days
R0 (pronounced “R naught”) is a mathematical term that indicates how contagious an infectious disease is.
R0 tells you the average number of people who will catch a disease from one contagious person. If a disease as R0 of 3, a person who has the disease will transmit it to an average of 3 other people.
If no one has any immunity then in the early days the total population doesn’t matter. If you drop one infected person in a city of 1 million people and another in a city of 10 million people and the R0 is identical then the disease will spread at a similar rate.
It only makes a difference when the curve will start to flatten. In a city of 1 million, you’ll cover the percentage of the population faster than in the city of 10 million. As people develop an infection and get better, they generally develop immunity.
Now the comparison and analysis of today
Spain and Italy had a very poor response and therefore, a lot of deaths. Rather than learning from these two countries, the United States chose to first ignore the crises. Once it recognized it as a problem, it still refused to develop a data-backed strategy.
The result, although heartbreaking, is not surprising. Look at figure 1 to see how the US has a really steep curve. Not only is the curve not flattening, but it is also actually becoming steeper. That is truly alarming.
Let’s zoom in.
Here it’s more obvious how the countries are doing:
Italy is flattening.
Spain, too, is flattening. It is flattening sooner than Italy did.
Germany avoided the sharp increase other countries had. As a result, it has fewer deaths.
Canada, so far, has avoided a rapid increase of other countries.
The United States has no signs of flattening.
Let’s zoom in some more.
Here we can focus on Canada more. Canada continues to control the number of COVID-19 deaths very, very well. Even better than Germany.
However, the UK acts as a warning sign for Canada. The United Kingdom had a late surge. Canada, too, will see the surge (which we haven’t hit yet). I suspect our peak will happen in 2–4 weeks, but it is impossible to predict because the published R0 numbers of COVID-19 are all over the place.
However, the measures in place in Canada are far better than what any other country in this list (except perhaps Germany) had at Canada’s stage.
Unlike other countries, every level of government in Canada jumped on the issue before things got bad. The UK had half-ass measures initially. The United States was in complete and total denial.
This is the result as of April 8th (every number represents a human life that was lost to COVID-19 in each country)
Back to the United States, what’s scary is that their trend isn’t moving down quickly enough:
Zoom in more (accurate as of yesterday, taken from The Star)
That’s it for today.
Canada is still doing very well. Germany is doing well. Italy is done with its peak. Spain is done with its peak. The UK is doing poorly and the US is doing extremely poorly.
Americans should be very disappointed, and angry, at the response by their federal government. Its handling of the crises is so poor that it almost seems intentional. The US States are literally bidding against each other, and therefore driving up the price, of medical supplies because of the lack of a cohesive national strategy.
That, unfortunately, is resulting in avoidable deaths.
