Apr 6 US Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

The big news for Monday is that, while the percentage growth of new cases did go higher than it was on Sunday, it was still remarkably low at just over 9%. If this holds up it will show that the goal of flattening the curve IS being achieved. The sacrifices we all are making seem to be working.

Let's take a look at the states:

Notes:

• While overall the nation is seeing a reduction in growth rates, there are some places where increases are more troubling.
• Connecticut is one of those states, already hard hit, that now sees their infection rates increase by 21.7%. The rest of the tri-state area, by contrast, saw much lower increases, with New York increasing by 7% and New Jersey by 9.6%
• Another state with an alarming increase was neighboring Rhode Island, increasing 17.4%.
• South Dakota had a 20% increase.

Here are the counties:

Notes:

• We did not see any increase in the number of counties past 300 cases per 100,000.
• My county, Harris County TX, saw a surprising increase Monday of almost 30%. I don't know if this is a testing surge issue (lots of results coming in on one day), but it does bare watching. Overall the rate is still relatively low compared to many places in the country.

Thought for the day:

The world has been conducting an experiment about the role of government. In the US, we are seeing this done at state or even county level. I will try at some point to see if I can compare state rates of increase vs when and how social distancing measures were emplaced. But on an international level, we can see an experiment going on in Scandinavia. Norway has joined much of the world in imposing social distancing requirements, but Sweden has taken a more mild approach. They've closed high schools, but not preschools or grade schools. They've banned large events, but restaurants and bars are still open.

I recently came across this article in the National Review. Unsurprisingly, the authors (John Fund, a National Review writer, and Joel Hay a professor in Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy at USC who "has collaborated with the Swedish Institute for Health Economics for nearly 40 years") seem very concerned about the government mandates imposed through social distancing rules, and both the economic hardship and loss of liberty that result. They love the Swedish model, and strangely make strong claims that it is working.

I say strangely because the evidence presented seems tailored to the argument, rather than the other way around. They initially compare Sweden (favorably) with Switzerland, "a similar small European Country". Well, it is similar in that they both have names (in English) starting with "Sw". But somehow they fail to think that Switzerland's location bordering the very province of Italy that had the highest rates of infection in all of Europe (and at one time the world) would play a principal role in explaining that country's high rates of infection.

They follow that up with a comparison with Norway, a comparison I feel much more apt as I suspect the two countries have a lot of similarities. They note Norway has a lower death rate but higher ICU rate. Personally, I would call that a wash, but shockingly that is the sum of their comparative analysis.

Well, this may come as a shock to you, but I have some analysis of my own. Norway does have higher rates of infection than Sweden, and has since I started occasionally tracking international cases. But I happened to look again last night, where I noticed that in the 4 days since I'd previously checked the international numbers, Norway's cases had gone up by a total of 9.2%, whereas Sweden's had gone up 17.5%, nearly twice as fast. So of course I dug further:

This chart shows the rate of increase over the previous day since Feb 25, the first day a Norwegian had Covid-19 (the first Swede had been infected a few days earlier). Norway is red, Sweden blue. It's not that useful on the right-hand side because the numbers start out so small that the percentage scale is wildly skewed, but what you should see is that in the early days the Norwegians had a lot more growth, and then both nations fluctuated, and it seems to have evened out. Or has it?

If we zoom in to the last 3+ weeks, the scale changes so we can actually see what has happened recently:

Again, Norway is red and Sweden blue. What you can see is that for the past almost two weeks, Sweden has consistently had higher rates of new infections than Norway.

Bear in mind, Sweden, despite all claims, is practicing social distancing; they just are doing it at a reduced level compared to most other countries.

The real shame, to me, is that if you want to argue that the extreme social distancing practiced in much of Europe and the US is not the right way to handle the spread of coronavirus in America, you can make a strong argument. But the countries to point to are South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore--places that aggressively tested and then aggressively contact traced, allowing them to isolate only those infected and not have to institute widespread social distancing. But we didn't do that, so the only choice left is to let roughly 2 million people die, or practice widespread social distancing.