COVID-19 day 101 : 📈 1,069,826 cases; 63,019 deaths : 30 April 2020
Data suggest the US is in a plateau for both daily cases and deaths; stories connect us, but which stories should we be sharing; what can we learn from Rome and smallpox; South Korea FTW
It’s day 101 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. There are more than 60,000 deaths.
In early April, researchers behind a now controversial model developed at the University of Washington lowered its projections for total coronavirus deaths. The lower bound for early August total deaths dropped from 100,000 to 60,000.
The deaths that CDC reported on 30 April: 60,057.
This number, an estimate which undercounts the total by about 9,000, is subject to the vagaries of state definitions and collection practices.
According to STAT News, independent data scientist Youyang Gu has developed a model which “has been tracking actual U.S. cases and deaths better than many.” That’s the model at the top of this page.
Daily death numbers are “stubbornly” refusing to drop. Rather than seeing a peak followed by a decline in cases and deaths, the US appears to be in a plateau. Trevor Bedord, Fred Hutchinson in Seattle, attributes this to states being at different places in the infectious cycle: some have cases increasing, others are decreasing.
🦠There will be a slight change in reporting going forward. I will continue to publish data daily. Introductory commentary on an issue (a mini-deep dive) will be periodic/minimal. Global and state news will be more bulleted. If you have a specific issue you’d like to see addressed, comment on a post or @ me on Twitter; I will see that faster than a reply to the newsletter email. 😉
Thursday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,069,826 (1,039,909) cases and 63,019 (60,966) deaths in the US, an increase of 2.88% and 3.37%, respectively, since Wednesday. A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 3.15% and 6.8%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 28,665 (28,183) cases and 1,865 (2,026) deaths
That case rate is 323.21per 100,000; the death rate, 190.39 per million.
One week ago, the case rate was 262.59 per 100,000; the death rate, 150.94 per million.
Note: numbers in (.) are from the prior day and are provided for context. I include the seven-day average because dailies vary so much in the course of a week.
🤓Recommended reading
The plague waxed and waned for a generation, peaking in the year 189 when a witness recalled that 2,000 people died per day in the crowded city of Rome. Smallpox devastated much of Roman society. The plague so ravaged the empire’s professional armies that offensives were called off. It decimated the aristocracy to such a degree that town councils struggled to meet, local magistracies went unfilled, and community organizations failed for lack of members. It cut such deep swaths through the peasantry that abandoned farms and depopulated towns dotted the countryside from Egypt to Germany.
Why Romans Grew Nostalgic for the Deadly Plague of 165 A.D. Zocalo Public Square, 26 April 2020.
Why it’s important: because history repeats itself.
Because story is what connects. Gina is a friend and former coworker who is now at Oxford. [Threadreader]
🔬Research and medical news
Want models? The CDC links to a handful of university models; ARCGIS has a hub of COVID-19 models based on its tools.
Watch peer review in action as UW professor of biology Carl Bergstrom discusses a Danish paper on antibodies. [Twitter | Threadreader]
🎦Recommended viewing
⓵ Around the country
The NY Times has confirmed “coronavirus clusters in more than 40 food processing facilities across the country.”
Some companies, including Tyson and Smithfield, have refused to answer even basic questions about the size of their outbreaks. And in some places, including Dakota County, Neb., where case numbers have exploded in recent days and where Tyson closed a plant for cleaning, health departments have also declined to give that information. The Nebraska National Guard has been testing workers at that facility.
Be sure to run the animation.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have identified COVID-19 cases and all have at least one death.
Please take a moment and answer this short reader survey! ✅
⓶ Around the world
The World Health Organization has established a global reference testing network and has published a daily situation report since 21 January 2020. It is only coincidental that the first report coincided with the first case identified in the United States.
From that first report:
07 January, China identified a new type of coronavirus.
12 January 2020, China shared the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus for countries to use in developing specific diagnostic kits.
13 January 2020, Thailand reported the first case of lab-confirmed novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
15 January 2020, Japan reported its first laboratory-confirmed 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
20 January 2020, the Republic of Korea reported its first case of novel coronavirus.
21 January 2020, the United States reported its first laboratory-confirmed 2019-novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
23 January 2020, Wuhan, China, lockdown
What is the status of those initial outbreaks? The last shall be first:
US: 1,069,826 cases, 63,019 deaths | 190 deaths/million | no national lockdown
China: 83,956 cases, 4,637 deaths | 3.9 deaths/million | lockdown
Japan: 14,088 cases, 430 deaths | no national lockdown
South Korea: 10,774 cases, 248 deaths | testing/tracing/isolation/quarantine
Thailand: 2,960 cases, 54 deaths | curfew/testing/tracing
The number of affected countries/territories/areas jumped from 29 at the end of February to 209 today. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a seafood (“wet”) market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data suggest that the virus may have developed elsewhere.
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
New York State Attorney General Letitia James is calling on cable and satellite companies to refund monthly fees to consumers who have TV packages that include “expensive sports networks, when those sports networks aren't carrying any live sports.”
⓸ Case count
There is a lag between being contagious and showing symptoms, between having a test and getting its results. The virus was not created in a lab.
🌎 30 April
Globally: 3 090 445 confirmed (71 839 - new) with 217 769 deaths (9797 - new)
The Americas: 1 246 190 confirmed (33 102 - new) 65 228 deaths (2824 - new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard*
Global confirmed: 3,257,996 (3,194,663 - yesterday)
Total deaths: 233,429 (227,671 - yesterday)
Recovered: 1,014,931 (973,460 - yesterday)
🇺🇸 30 April
CDC: 1,031,659 (1,005,147) cases and 60,057 (57,505) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 1,069,826 (1,039,909) cases and 63,019 (60,966) deaths
State data*: 1,061,101 (1,033,157) identified cases and 57,266 (55,225) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 6,231,182 (6,026,170)
View infographic and data online: total cases, cases/100,000 and deaths/million.
* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.30 pm Pacific
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
⓹ What you can do
Stay home as much as possible, period.
Digestive problems may be a symptom.
Resources
👓 See COVID-19 resource collection at WiredPen.
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🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
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