I’m still interested in the Rates of Reproduction and the tracking of this number. I picked 7 countries that were interesting to me for various regions and began tracking their numbers (including Ro) over time. Above you can see some of the results. Notable observations: Germany’s Ro on 4/15 was the highest of the group of 7 at 1.3. This means, in theory, that one new infected person would infect 1.3 more people. On 4/15, we also see a number of countries that are struggling now with Ro numbers less than 0.5 (Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Singapore. Singapore, especially, is interesting because 4/15 was in between their first (small) wave of infections and their current (larger) wave. Now you can see Singapore’s number is up to 1.46 and Brazil and Mexico are much higher. The US peaked somewhere around 4/30 and is trending slowly downward. Germany, however, has moved down quite a bit, signifying that their outbreak is under control. Sweden, with the most unique strategy for COVID-19 immunity, has held pat at just under 1.0 for the entire duration. I wonder if this is an artifact of their systematic approach?
Now, see below for the top 11 countries by Ro (with more than 1K cases) over those same time periods. Just like above, you can see some countries dramatically decrease their Ro (Portugal, Turkey) while new countries replaced them at the top of the list. Note also that right now, a high Rate of Reproduction isn’t equaling a high deaths per 1000 number. This may be due to new countries experiencing outbreaks, or may be due to some other factor (temperature? Immunity? Better approaches to medical care?)
