Month: March 2020

I have blended smoking rates for both males and females by country as well as the 2020 population for the countries with the data. I’m curious about how correlated these features are with the severity “slope” of confirmed cases.

Results: See correlation plot below. The severity slope is most correlated with the country’s population, then with male smoking rates. Female smoking rate is slightly negatively correlated with severity, but that could be anomalous due to the granularity of the smoking and population data (I have it by country, not by state or county).

So, what does this tell us? Smoking rates have an impact (particularly male smoking) on the severity, but not near as much as the overall country’s population (and therefore local population density is probably even more correlated).

Correlation Results Below
                       slope
slope                 1.000000   
pop2020               0.141106   
maleSmokingRate       0.069965   
totalSmokingRate      0.028203   
femaleSmokingRate    -0.052708  

In the data from the rest of the world, we continue to see some of the same countries continue to increase their active cases at a high rate. Germany outpaced Italy for the first time. New York State (the first ‘US’ on the chart below) also continues to increase their case load.

Quick update for new data. Yesterday saw New York state continue to soar in number of cases but Washington decrease. These are Active Cases, which are the difference between confirmed cases and recoveries, so that shows that our “WIP” (from the entry below) is decreasing in Washington. Other than this, for the US, things continue at about the same pace as the last few days.

State	Active Cases	Difference – 24 hrs
New York	2479	786
Washington	959	-61
California	738	58
Florida	307	97
New Jersey	264	1
Louisiana	253	61
Massachusetts	218	1
Georgia	196	51
Colorado	182	24
Texas	170	61
Illinois	161	3
Pennsylvania	152	40
Wisconsin	92	21
Ohio	86	19
Maryland	85	28

I’ve been thinking about how to assess COVID-19 Confirmed Contraction rates with Recovery rates… this might be key for pointing at societal success in addressing the epidemic. Not sure if the data is mature enough, but what I’m finding does indicate either some potential tampering with the data or more rapid societal recovery after the cases flatten off (hospitals become more effective at that point? Here are a few examples from the most affected countries.

These charts look like something we use in the manufacturing world called a cumulative flow diagram. The interesting thing about a cumulative flow diagram is that the vertical distance between the two lines equals the cycle time. In this case, that refers to the time to clear your patient load. The vertical distance between the two lines, however, equals the “work in progress”, which in this case, would be the number of patients who have the disease (active cases). This may reflect some percentage of the hospital beds in use (what percentage of active cases need hospitalization? Probably depends on the country).

The last chart compares Italy and Iran. This data pretty much makes the case that Iran is way understating their infections and/or overstating their recoveries. The chart tells us that right now, the cycle time for both nations is undetermined (we don’t have enough recoveries yet). But it also shows that the active cases for Italy is 2-3 times that of Iran. That’s just not credible, considering that their case loads started at the same time, Iran has 20 million more people than Italy, and Iran has about 40% of the hospital beds per 1000 people as does Italy. Italians do smoke 36% more cigarettes per year per capita than Iranians (but almost zero percent women smoke in Iran, vs 19% of women in Italy).

Finally, from the China chart (if we can believe it), we can see that the cycle time to clear the patient load is consistently about 20 days. The Singapore chart might give us some concern, though, as it appears that they closed their WIP to just a handful of cases, then it opened back up significantly. Perhaps more data will help us understand this better.

One of the things I’m seeing a lot of discussion around is “flattening the curve” and the effects of social isolation. I’m very curious as to why some countries/regions have seen very different growth patterns in confirmed COVID-19 cases. One red herring I’ve seen a lot is the comparison of the first few days/weeks of the Italy outbreak with the first few days/weeks of the US outbreak. The reason this isn’t an honest comparison, of course, is that with an exponential curve one cannot know up front what the value of the exponent is or whether that power curve pattern will continue.

Here’s some time series analysis of the outbreaks in the top regions, first by the world then by US states.

It’s very interesting to see the differences. Assuming the data collection is accurate, it would appear that China and S. Korea have inverted their curves (looks more like a sigmoid curve now) — but for how long? Italy, Spain, and France still seem to be in their initial power curve phase, whereas Iran seems to be increasing linearly (yet another sign that their data is bad, most likely).

In the US chart I also included the Diamond Princess as a point of interest. Note how in a very small, contained sample the number of cases went flat quickly. This may point to the great value of the extreme social isolation that some countries have imposed (from reports I’ve read, Italy seems to have failed this step).

Due to the small size of the images embedded in this WordPress blog, I’m also starting to add PDF versions afterwards that can be downloaded in case you want to see higher resolution.

Most European countries are updating their data while we’re sleeping in Arizona. I have re-run analytics and added new ones. Things continue to get worse in Italy, Spain, and Iran. Total numbers of deaths in Italy will catch those in China today or tomorrow and Spain is catching up to Iran. Numbers of new active cases in New York state skyrocketed yesterday. New York and Washington were essentially tied yesterday. Perhaps this reflects that Washington is a week or two ahead of New York and maybe it’s new active cases are slowing down.

Bar Chart that shows current Active cases and deaths in last 24 hrs.