Coronavirus Pandemic – Another Grim Milestone as Global Death Toll Reaches One Million

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The pandemic that has caused unimaginable physical and economic misery reaches a new milestone today: The global death toll reaches 1 million. The top three countries -- the US, Brazil, and India -- account for 45% of all deaths.

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The graph of daily cases shows how the three lines meet at the beginning of August, after which the US and Brazil have steadily trended down in tandem, while India has trended up almost linearly. Sadly, India has been registering, on average, 90K cases and 1K deaths daily. Of course, the graph demonstrates the volatility in Brazil and the US's reporting, primarily at weekends. India's reporting has been a lot more consistent.

The correlation matrix also nicely summarizes the trend. Since halfway through the curve, the US and Brazil have been trending down in tandem, the correlation coefficient has been moderately positive at 0.53. On the other hand, since India has diverged on both sides of the curve, it has very low collinearity with Brazil (0.10) and the US (0.17).

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The daily death trends have been very similar, including the reporting volatility. Brazil and the US have been moving in lockstep, whereas India continues to surge. Since 9/1, India has reported at least 1K cases daily, with a daily average of 1,124, while Brazil and the US have reported 770 and 789, respectively. Conversely, in June, India's average stood at 345, compared to Brazil's 1,023 and the US's 641. 

Therefore, the correlations matrix shows a high 0.66 correlation between Brazil and the US, a negative -0.23 correlation between Brazil and India, and a moderately low 0.33 correlation between India and the US.  

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As indicated above, the US, Brazil, and India have accounted for 45% of all deaths, despite owning 54% of the cases. Russia and Mexico have been the distant fourth runners in total cases and deaths. Despite the rapid surge in cases and deaths, India's death rates -- both actual and population-wise -- have remained low. The high positivity rates in Latin America have been well-known. Mexico's high death and positivity rates are tragic, while its testing record remains abysmal. 

Until the vaccines are widely available, the US, Russia, and Spain must maintain the testing momentum; other hard-hit countries -- especially Brazil, Mexico, and India -- must intensify their testing campaigns.

Stay safe!

Data Sources:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Brazil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_India

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com

  

Coronavirus Pandemic – India Endures another Grim Milestone of 5M Cases

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Since August, India has been the world's epicenter when it started to eclipse the daily counts of the then frontrunner Brazil. 

Today, it hit a new milestone of 5M confirmed cases, solidly occupying the second position.

At the beginning of June, India was in the seventh position with a total caseload of 191K. Its daily average jumped threefold to 35.8K in July, nearly doubling to 64.4K in August and a rocketing to 88.7K in the first two weeks of September. 

Lately, its daily caseload has been hovering around 90K.

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India's deaths remain horrific, reaching a total of 82K as of this post on 9/15. Again, while the daily deaths averaged 345 in June, it jumped to 616 in July, 928 in August, and a whopping 1,118 thus far in September. Though it occupies the second position in case counts, it remains number three in total death tolls, behind Brazil and the US. Since all these three countries are still registering around 1K daily deaths, it is difficult to predict if India would eventually surge past them.

 

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The regression between the daily cases and daily deaths demonstrates a near-perfect linear relationship, confirming the simultaneous surge, unlike in the US, where deaths significantly trailed during the resurgence in August. Except for a handful of outliers, the fit is pretty tight; nonetheless, the r-squared value representing the collinearity is relatively high. 

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Despite the recent surge, India's death rate remains the lowest among the ten hardest-hit countries. Likewise, its population-level death rate also remains extremely low. On the other hand, it has a less than sellar testing credential and a moderate positivity rate, further contributing to the surge.

India needs to peak and taper shortly to avoid running into the coming flu season, which could be even more deadly.

Stay safe!

Data Sources:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_India

-Sid Som
homequant@gmail.com

Coronavirus Pandemic – India Endures Two Grim Milestones: 2.5M Cases and 50K Deaths

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1. The above graph shows how surging daily cases have been tormenting India. Between 6/19 and 7/15, the daily cases averaged 21,083, skyrocketing to 51,291 since then -- a whopping 143% jump in mere a month. Even the 7-day moving average has been trending at over the perfectly-linear 45-degree.

2. The daily death toll also kept pace, moving in tandem with the cases. During the periods described above, the death toll average jumped nearly 80%, from 447 to 798. While the moving average trendline has remained linear, it is slightly below the perfect-45. Unfortunately, the average has further jumped to 918 in the last ten days.

3. Since the above two graphs demonstrated linear trends during the same period, the regression between the two datasets is expectedly linear, as evidenced by the high r-squared value of 0.872. 

Hey Applied Econ students -- Here is the power of outliers: Without one outlier data point on 7/23, the r-squared jumps to 0.93.

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4. Given the large population of India, it has one of the smallest population (per million) death rates among the hardest-hit countries in the world. Since it opted for a series of lockdowns initially, instead of intensifying testing, its testing credentials are woefully weak. Its positivity rate has been inching up too.

Happy Independence Day, India!

Stay safe!

Data Sources: 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_India

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com