Coronavirus numbers (let’s try this again)

Earlier today, I wrote a post about Wuhan coronavirus data, using numbers from Worldometer. I can’t vouch for this site, but its numbers seem consistent with those I’ve seen elsewhere, including some official sources. I think the numbers are probably pretty reliable as to free nations, but not necessarily for China and almost certainly not for Iran.

Unfortunately, my initial post was confusing and, although it included caveats, a little misleading. However, the Worldometer data is a potentially useful way of tracking the number of Wuhan coronavirus cases and deaths both in the U.S. and in other free countries.

I therefore plan to keep looking at these numbers and probably to keep writing about them.

Here are some highlights from yesterday’s numbers — March 18.

In the U.S., there were 2,848 new reported cases yesterday. That brought the total to 9,259. (Already today, there are more than 2,000 additional new reported cases in the U.S.) This means that about 30 percent of all recorded cases in the U.S. were reported yesterday. That’s not encouraging.

There were 41 new deaths reported yesterday. That brought the total to 150.

As of yesterday, France had almost the same number of reported cases as did the U.S. However, France had only about half as many reported new cases yesterday as we did. It had twice as many new reported deaths, though.

It looks like France was hit worse than the U.S. early on and that we’re “catching up.”

Italy, not France, is the country that some have said we’re a few weeks behind. In Italy yesterday, there were 4,207 new reported cases. That brought the total number of reported cases to almost 36,000.

There were 475 new deaths in Italy, bringing the death count to almost 3,000. As of today, according to Worldometer, total deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus in Italy now exceed total deaths from that virus in China. Again, however, I don’t have great confidence in the Chinese numbers.

On March 18, new reported cases as a percentage of all reported cases in the U.S. were comparable to, but somewhat higher than, new reported cases as a percentage of all reported cases in Spain and Germany. As noted before, the U.S. percentage was much higher than the French percentage. In the U.S., new reported cases were about 30 percent of total cases. In France, they were about 15 percent.

What about Italy? There, new reported cases were only a bit more than 10 percent of all reported cases. But so far today, that number looks somewhat worse.

I don’t think there are many conclusions we can draw from the March 18 numbers about where we and other countries are headed. However, by tracking the Worldometer numbers during the coming days, we should gain insight.

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