Coronavirus Pandemic – The Second Wave in the UK has been Deadlier

Even before the emergence of the UK's variant strain, the massive surge in cases and deaths from the second wave was tormenting the country. 

Now, the faster and deadlier pace of transmission of the new strain has forced parts of the country back into lockdown. Of course, if the current vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are effective against the new strain, it would be welcome news for the UK and other countries as the public health experts suspect that the new strain has already been incubating elsewhere. 

After an extended remission in the summer, a renewed surge hit the UK in the fall. Still, it promptly tapered in late November, allowing public health professionals to breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, it was extremely short-lived. The above graph shows how vicious the December resurgence has been. The daily cases averaged a mere 4K in September, rocketing to 18K in October, and 23K thus far in December. The 7-day moving average trendline confirms the massive surge.

After the initial breakout was brought under control in early summer, the UK's daily death toll tapered to single digits, only to return fiercely in the fall, and steadily rising ever since. To put the horror of the daily death toll, let's look at the monthly averages: 21 in September, rising to 142 in October, tripling to 396 in November, and escalating further to 461 thus far in December. The most recent trend has been more horrific, as the daily tolls have consistently exceeded the 500-mark. Today (12/23), the UK registered a heart-breaking toll of 744.

Since Italy has also been hard-hit by the second wave, it offers an excellent comparative platform. Obviously, due to the very similar outbreaks, the data points demonstrate collinearity, resulting in high r-squared values. However, the above trendlines also emphasize how the UK's cases and deaths have lately been eclipsing Italy's. Needless to say, if the new strain impacts en masse, the slope will exponentiate.  

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The UK is now third on the European chart with over 2M cases and 69K deaths. Though its positivity rate has remained low, its death rate has been ticking up.

To prevent another Wuhan, it should temporarily close down all of its international passenger airports. 

Stay safe!

Data Sources:

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

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

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

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com

Coronavirus Pandemic – How the US Reached 300K Death Toll

(Click on the image to enlarge)

At the outset of the onslaught, when the White House Task Force projected a high death toll of 65K, the people worldwide woke up in fear and awe. Fast forward nine months: Yesterday, the widely-followed Johns Hopkins' Coronavirus Resource site flashed that the pandemic-related confirmed death toll in the US had crossed 300K. 

Of course, we have much to cheer on today as a couple of vaccines are ready (or being readied) for mass distribution, starting with the population's high-risk segments.

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

 

Unfortunately, the actual death toll eclipsed the dire predictions in no time, hitting 100K on May 22, i.e., within three months from the first fatality, forcing the public health researchers to revert to the drawing board to tweak their vastly-flawed models that under-predicted, to say the least. New York and New Jersey collectively contributed roughly 43% of the overall death toll.

  

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

The rate of growth in the death toll slightly eased while reaching 200K on September 15, thanks to the newly-approved treatment drugs like Gilead's Remdesivir and Regeneron's Regn-Cov2, replacing the malaria drug Hydrochloroqueen that was initially used by many hospitals to treat Covid patients. During this phase, while the Northeast had eased, the Sunbelt caught on with a fury.

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

The above graphs demonstrate how the death rate lately has been accelerating, with a backward-bending tilt. Like the way we reached the first 100K deaths in just three months, we achieved the same distinction during the recent phase as we reached the 300K mark, despite all of the advancements in treatments and logistics.   

Now that the vaccines are here, hopefully the next milestone will be unremarkable.

Stay safe!

Data Sources:

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

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

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

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com

Coronavirus Pandemic – The US faces a Massive Second Wave

The ongoing second wave of the pandemic has been fast and furious. Case in point: At the initial stages of the onslaught, the scientific community had projected the death toll to be around 65K; today, it stands at 276K. Similarly, at the tail-end of the initial surge in June, there were roughly 2.5M cases, exploding to over 14M as of today.

After a remission of the initial surge between July and September, the second wave hit the US. It initially hit the Sunbelt, extending into the middle corridor and on to the Northeast in recent weeks. While the daily cases averaged 38.959 in September, it escalated to 58,743 in October, rocketing to 139,702 in November. The 7-day moving average trendline amply confirms the explosion.  

Though the daily death toll has steadily risen during the second wave, the growth rate has been significantly lower than the initial encounter. For instance, the daily deaths averaged 761 in September, flat-lining in October to 746, and escalating to 1,176 in November. While the recent jump is significant, it is 1.5 times the September toll, compared to 3.6 times in case surge.

The above regression graph makes a case for the tapering death rate. Since the case surge has been outpacing the death rate, the line of best fit has been logarithmic with an r-squared value of 0.981, exceeding the r-squared value of 0.962 from the linear fit. The slope also demonstrates that the death toll has started falling after the intersection point of 10M cases and 205K deaths, forming the logarithmic (curvilinear) tilt.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Though the US owns 22% of the world's cases and the highest population-case rate in the western world, it has a lower death rate than the worldwide average. Despite a higher positivity rate than most of Europe, it has one of the world's best testing credentials. Due to the on-going second wave in Europe and the US, the active rates continue to climb, whereas the Latin American countries have experienced significant drops.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

In the US, Texas, California, and Florida have been the three hardest-hit states, followed by Illinois and New York. The severity of the initial jolt keeps New York in the top five, with the highest death rate in the country. Lately, Wisconsin has seen a big jump in positivity rate, though Texas, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are also rising fast. Pennsylvania has one of the worst testing records as well.

Today, the US recorded the highest daily death toll of 2,611. Hopefully, Pfizer and Moderna will receive the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) later in the week so the vaccination could start.

Stay safe!

Data Sources:

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

Wikipedia -- COVID-19 pandemic in the United States

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com

Coronavirus Pandemic – Italy faces a more Horrific Second Wave

The on-going second wave of the pandemic in Italy has been more horrific than the initial one, requiring renewed lockdowns in the hardest-hit areas, especially tourist hot spots. Unfortunately, the rising death tolls have forced the extended death curve to form into a classic bi-modal one. 

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The above graph depicting the daily cases' full-spectrum tells the story the country has been facing. Here is how the second wave compares with the initial one. At the peak of the initial surge in March and April, the daily cases averaged 3,470 and 3,322, respectively, tapering exponentially to 888 and 263 in the following two months. As the second wave began in September with a daily average of 1,522, it promptly escalated to 11,760 in October. It rocketed to 32,940 in November, which is a whopping 9.5 times higher than the initial peak.

 
 

Despite being in a significantly better treatment environment now, the renewed death curve is fast becoming comparable to the initial one. For instance, during the initial wave in March and April, the daily death tolls averaged 413 and 518, respectively. Though the November average has jumped to 478, it has been escalating daily, with the toll jumping to 753 today and 731 yesterday.  

The regression between the daily cases and daily deaths during the second wave portrays the rising horror. The trendline has become exponential after surging past the intersection point of 25,000 cases and 200 deaths. Therefore, the linear trendline's r-squared value (not shown) is much lower than the r-squared value of the exponential trendline indicated here. As the scatter reveals, the daily deaths have started to further exponentiate after exceeding the 32,500/400 inflection point.  

On 3-31-2020, Itlay was number two worldwide, with 106K cases and 4K deaths, dropping to number six at the end of May with 231K cases and 33K deaths. The extended remission between the surges helped Italy move down to the number ten position (as shown above), although the recent explosion has spiked the caseload up to a massive 1.27M and deaths to 47K. 

The fact that the entire winter is still ahead and the mass distribution of vaccines is at least three months away makes the scenario all the more problematic for Italy, if not mostly grim. 

Stay safe!

Data Sources: 

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

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

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com 

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

(Click on the image to enlarge)

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.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

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

Coronavirus Pandemic – The On-going Rapid Surge in the Midwest

To keep this blog post short and simple, the Midwest here comprises only five states: Illinois (IL), Indiana (IN), Michigan (MI), Minnesota (MN), and Wisconsin (WI). 

While some of the Midwest states (IN, MN and WI) are surging, others (IL and MI) are resurging. Even the states that are left out have been participating in the current surge.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

1. The current surge resumed in mid-June and has been escalating rapidly. The daily cases averaged 2,093 in June but jumped 78% in July to a whopping 3,716. MI, which encountered a massive surge in April, has been spearheading the current surge with 165% jump, month-over-month, followed by WI (129%), IN (79%), IL (50%) and MN (35%).

2. The above correlation matrix reveals that the combined MidWest has the highest and lowest correlations expectedly with MI and MN, respectively, in line with their contributions to the current surge. Likewise, MI has the highest and lowest correlations with WI and MN, respectively. Since multi-collinearity has been disregarded here, it has paved the way for some minor distortions.

(CLick on the image to enlarge)

3. The residual impact of the prior surge has contributed to MI's inflated death rate, resulting in the entire MidWest's higher death rate. While MI and IL have been registering higher death and population mortality rates, WI and MN are on a better course. On the other hand, the positivity rates of IL and IN have remained relatively high. IN's testing credentials have also fallen behind its regional counterparts.

Stay safe!

Data Sources:

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

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

-Sid Som

homequant@gmail.com

                  Link to Sid's Books

Coronavirus Pandemic – The State of Ohio has been Rapidly Resurging

(Click on the image to enlarge)

1. Though the state of Ohio peaked and tapered in mid-June, the trend quickly reversed in late-June, starting an extraordinary resurgence by eclipsing the original highs set in April and May. While the daily cases averaged 543 in June, the average more than doubled in July to a whopping 1,270. The 7-day moving average trendline confirms the massive resurgence.

2. Daily deaths moved up in tandem with the everyday cases. The regression graph makes it amply clear that the death toll has started spiking after flattening in the middle of the curve (May/June). Had the reporting been more consistent on weekends, the spikes would have been more multi-modal. However, the trendline demonstrates the reversal at the outer end of the curve (July/August).

(Click on the image to enlarge)

3. The death rate in Ohio has not only stabilized but has also fallen below some of its surrounding neighbors, particularly Pennsylvania and Michigan. Moreover, its testing credentials are worse than most of its neighbors. Though its positivity rate is still below the national average, it will start inching up with increased testing.

To flatten the resurging curve, Ohio needs to re-introduce more stringent mitigation measures, including a more careful multi-phase re-opening of schools, religious institutions, theme parks, and indoor amusement centers.

Stay safe!

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

-Sid Som
homequant@gmail.com