COVID-19 Status Report 3/20/2020

As of today there are more than 260,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and nearly 12,000 deaths. Nearly half of all the reported deaths have been in Italy. By comparison the number of death compared to the number of diagnosed cases in South Korea is much, much lower.

I wanted to take a quick look at something I touched on earlier—South Korea’s “bending the curve”. Consider this graph of diagnosed active cases there (diagnosed cases less deaths and recoveries):

As you can see the total number of active cases has peaked and the number is declining slowly. The number of active cases is just about what it was two weeks ago, having declined from a peak of about 7,000 to about 6,500. The reasons for the decline are primarily fewer new cases and some recoveries. It should be apparent that’s not much of a decline. It could easily be overwhelmed by a correction in the data or by a second wave of new cases. We’ll need to wait and see. What I think should be noted is that most of the people who were sick three weeks ago in South Korea are still sick.

If it is our good fortune to follow the path taken by South Korea, at the rate at which new cases are being diagnosed here the peak is not yet in sight and the time at which we have reached the point at which South Korea is now is unlikely to have been reached before June.

Here in the United States “shelter in place” orders are going out on both coasts and in some places in between. The six counties around San Francisco (San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa, Alameda, Santa Clara) are included in that. Santa Cruz is under lockdown. San Miguel County in Colorado has imposed a shelter in place order. That is being debated in New York City. The Oak Park suburb of Chicago has imposed a shelter in place order. It is being considered for the state of Illinois.

I think that such measures are mistaken—both overly broad and too late.