2 ms·

I heavily disagree on the doubling time being closer to 7 days. If you have a look at Germany who is having a very good overview of the spread of the pandemic

I heavily disagree on the doubling time being closer to 7 days. If you have a look at Germany who is having a very good overview of the spread of the pandemic since testing is free, available, and done rapidly (5h turnaround time ) capacity for 12.000 tests a day ) you get a close to 3 day case doubling time currently if you look at the official German numbers from the Robert Koch Institute. And we'll start seeing in a week or two how good the drastic containment measures they are starting now are impacting the growth or viral spread. 11.03.2020 1,288.00 12.03.2020 1,567.00 13.03.2020 2,369.00 14.03.2020 3,062.00 15.03.2020 3,795.00 16.03.2020 4,838.00 In a country like the US where the Author makes his calculations the government frankly has zero clue how many people are infected already because testing is not free, not available and not rapid ( current turnaround 3 -5 days ) for most citizens. There is a chance that the case doubling time is worse, or bigger, but if Germany who had a lot better reaction to the viral threat is having problems reaching a case doubling time of 6+ days and if you think about that China is at 80.000 cases now but put the most drastic containment measures in at only 600 confirmed cases there is a huge probability we are all in for a very wild ride. That said every day counts because there are promising randomized control studies going on in China which hopefully give doctors access to a drug they can actually help people with. Right now all they can do is support your breathing and pump you full with a cocktail of meds they have no idea if it will work for the specific patient or not. Everyone who lands into ICU with Covid-19 is basically a guinea pig for the rest of us healthy people at this point. In the end all that matters right now is that we don't know enough about the illness to treat it effectively, and we are in desperate need of time because no government was prepared for a pathogen like this that usually is a once in a century event. P.S: This is a current snapshot. If the containment measures like in China are working the case doubling rate rises quite fast. China is at over 21+ days now. But I think it's important to take this day by day and re-evaluate the numbers. The "doomsdays predictions" will most likely be wrong and just a theoretical numbers game.

kragen 7y ago
You're probably right that Germany has the most trustworthy numbers. The numbers you give work out to 30% growth per day, a 2.6-day doubling time; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pa... says Germany is at 6245 today, very close to the 6304 you'd predict from your numbers, although the Robert Koch Institut hasn't updated their page yet. So, what accounts for the difference? The paucity of international travel (but then why is the spread so much slower in every other country — Germany is hardly famous for close physical contact with strangers)? Or is it just that Germany's comprehensive testing is allowing them to detect almost all the cases, while everybody else is underestimating by a factor of 10 to 50 or more — a constantly exponentially growing factor? It seems unlikely that the pandemic was growing by 30% per day since December; it would have already infected 450 million people. Can we really impute that difference entirely to containment measures?
- Jamesbeam 7y ago
  There is a simple explanation why the spread in Germany seems so much higher. If we look at how the virus spread in Germany we get a very good explanation. It all started with a small cluster around Munich that showed up around the end of January ( 27th ) as the first confirmed case in Germany came back from business travel to China that was contained rather quickly as everyone involved did a great job isolating and breaking the infection chain and everyone involved recovered without severe symptoms just like any other flu for most mid-aged and healthy people. Then for a good month there were no confirmed cases, so no more drastic containment measures were taken. After that the Government carelessly allowed Carnival in Germany to happen thinking they contained the virus and severely underestimating the threat it could pose. Carnival is one of the biggest celebrations in Germany each year with millions of people from all over the country coming to see, especially the Cologne Carnival on the 24th of February. While in general you are not wrong when you say "Germany is hardly famous for close physical contact with strangers” the carnival season and Oktoberfest are the two occasions where Germans do voluntarily have a ton of contact with strangers and party heavily. The Rhineland is famous for their carnival all over Europe and in some parts of the world. If you look at pictures of it you’ll see what kind of nightmare this is if you have a potentially deadly pathogen spreading silently during the celebration from an epidemiologist point of view. Three days later a couple from the region were the second and third confirmed cases that heavily participated in the celebrations while already being sick. Remember Covid-19 can be contagious up to 14 days before a patient shows symptoms. On top of that there was no chance to break the infection chain because the man is still in critical care and couldn't talk to officials and the woman had no idea where they could have been infected because they had contact with hundreds, possibly thousands of people over the course of the celebration days until the husband fell critically ill. So the lack of care from the Government together with gathering of hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country in close proximity, kissing, drinking and standing head to head in a crowd paired with that there were no tests done on people with covid-19 symptoms for a whole month between the munich and heinsberg cases is most likely the reason for the explosion in case numbers. Also remember we are basically looking into the past up to 14 days as people who need hospitalization now have been infectious for up to that timeframe and just now start getting very sick. This is an incredible different pathogen to deal with and easy to underestimate because of this. To fight a pandemic you need to know the number of infected people, if you know someone is infected that gives you a fighting chance to break the infection chain if you isolate all people they have been in contact with. Unfortunately because of the huge celebrations this was impossible to do and we are where we are now. "while everybody else is underestimating by a factor of 10 to 50 or more" this could very well be the case. With the numbers of infected people we see travelling outside Iran there are estimatons that a large part of the population is already infected. 7.5 Million people registered on an Iranian website that allowed for symptom screening. You usually don't register for such a site if you don't have any symptons that could be related to Covid-19. Just to show the difference between the real reported numbers and what could be likely. If you ask about the containment measures, yes they work incredibly well, but at the cost of gigantic economic damage and right now I don’t want to be in the shoes of any leader in any country that basically has to decide between saving lifes now and that there also needs to be a good future for the survivors of this crisis afterwards. It’s horrible to think that up to 25% of a certain population and age could die. But it’s equally frightening to think that depending how long this takes millions of people and their families could lose their homes, jobs and potentially starve because we have an almost complete economic shutdown across all sectors.
maxbreaker 7y ago
France has officially announced that it's doubling every 3 days as well. Definitively not 7 days now.

kragen 7y ago

You're probably right that Germany has the most trustworthy numbers. The numbers you give work out to 30% growth per day, a 2.6-day doubling time; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pa... says Germany is at 6245 today, very close to the 6304 you'd predict from your numbers, although the Robert Koch Institut hasn't updated their page yet. So, what accounts for the difference? The paucity of international travel (but then why is the spread so much slower in every other country — Germany is hardly famous for close physical contact with strangers)? Or is it just that Germany's comprehensive testing is allowing them to detect almost all the cases, while everybody else is underestimating by a factor of 10 to 50 or more — a constantly exponentially growing factor? It seems unlikely that the pandemic was growing by 30% per day since December; it would have already infected 450 million people. Can we really impute that difference entirely to containment measures?

Jamesbeam 7y ago
There is a simple explanation why the spread in Germany seems so much higher. If we look at how the virus spread in Germany we get a very good explanation. It all started with a small cluster around Munich that showed up around the end of January ( 27th ) as the first confirmed case in Germany came back from business travel to China that was contained rather quickly as everyone involved did a great job isolating and breaking the infection chain and everyone involved recovered without severe symptoms just like any other flu for most mid-aged and healthy people. Then for a good month there were no confirmed cases, so no more drastic containment measures were taken. After that the Government carelessly allowed Carnival in Germany to happen thinking they contained the virus and severely underestimating the threat it could pose. Carnival is one of the biggest celebrations in Germany each year with millions of people from all over the country coming to see, especially the Cologne Carnival on the 24th of February. While in general you are not wrong when you say "Germany is hardly famous for close physical contact with strangers” the carnival season and Oktoberfest are the two occasions where Germans do voluntarily have a ton of contact with strangers and party heavily. The Rhineland is famous for their carnival all over Europe and in some parts of the world. If you look at pictures of it you’ll see what kind of nightmare this is if you have a potentially deadly pathogen spreading silently during the celebration from an epidemiologist point of view. Three days later a couple from the region were the second and third confirmed cases that heavily participated in the celebrations while already being sick. Remember Covid-19 can be contagious up to 14 days before a patient shows symptoms. On top of that there was no chance to break the infection chain because the man is still in critical care and couldn't talk to officials and the woman had no idea where they could have been infected because they had contact with hundreds, possibly thousands of people over the course of the celebration days until the husband fell critically ill. So the lack of care from the Government together with gathering of hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country in close proximity, kissing, drinking and standing head to head in a crowd paired with that there were no tests done on people with covid-19 symptoms for a whole month between the munich and heinsberg cases is most likely the reason for the explosion in case numbers. Also remember we are basically looking into the past up to 14 days as people who need hospitalization now have been infectious for up to that timeframe and just now start getting very sick. This is an incredible different pathogen to deal with and easy to underestimate because of this. To fight a pandemic you need to know the number of infected people, if you know someone is infected that gives you a fighting chance to break the infection chain if you isolate all people they have been in contact with. Unfortunately because of the huge celebrations this was impossible to do and we are where we are now. "while everybody else is underestimating by a factor of 10 to 50 or more" this could very well be the case. With the numbers of infected people we see travelling outside Iran there are estimatons that a large part of the population is already infected. 7.5 Million people registered on an Iranian website that allowed for symptom screening. You usually don't register for such a site if you don't have any symptons that could be related to Covid-19. Just to show the difference between the real reported numbers and what could be likely. If you ask about the containment measures, yes they work incredibly well, but at the cost of gigantic economic damage and right now I don’t want to be in the shoes of any leader in any country that basically has to decide between saving lifes now and that there also needs to be a good future for the survivors of this crisis afterwards. It’s horrible to think that up to 25% of a certain population and age could die. But it’s equally frightening to think that depending how long this takes millions of people and their families could lose their homes, jobs and potentially starve because we have an almost complete economic shutdown across all sectors.

maxbreaker 7y ago

France has officially announced that it's doubling every 3 days as well. Definitively not 7 days now.