By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Though the daily rate of growth in cumulative Chinese-virus cases continues to fall, the daily rate of growth in cumulative deaths seems to have reached a plateau. Unfortunately, in the world as a whole deaths are still increasing at 6% per day, compound. If that rate were to persist, deaths from the virus would double in just 12 days.
In the United States, the growth rate in deaths is 10.3% compound per day: in Canada, 12.9%. If those rates were to persist, deaths in these countries would double in six or seven days. In Britain, where the daily death-growth rate is 7.2%, make that ten days. That is why attempts to compare the present cumulative deaths with a typical flu season are misconceived. Deaths from the Chinese virus are still rising far too fast for comfort.
Which is why Mr Trump’s tweets telling Democrat governors of states maintaining lockdowns may yet prove inappropriate. The President is in a difficult corner: he wants to restart the economy, because the cost of lockdowns is prodigious, but, like Mr Johnson in London, he is vulnerable to the charge that he did too little too late. Because the spread of a new infection is always near-perfectly exponential, there is a premium on acting very early, as South Korea and Taiwan did, and as Messrs. Trump and Johnson did not.
Unfortunately, there are still too many unknown unknowns to assist governments in taking sound decisions, which is why most of them have, in the end, opted for caution, though it comes at a heavy economic cost.
Fig. 1. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative confirmed cases of COVID-19 for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from March 28 to April 17, 2020.
Fig. 2. Mean compound daily growth rates in cumulative COVID-19 deaths for the world excluding China (red) and for several individual nations averaged over the successive seven-day periods ending on all dates from April 4 to April 17, 2020.
Sweden, for instance, has been the poster-child for doing without lockdowns. At first, this was a strategy that seemed to be working well. Indeed, as our graphs here show, Sweden – the bright blue line – has case-growth and death-growth rates only a little above the global mean, and it has achieved those rates without lockdown.
However, Sweden’s 1400 cumulative deaths are more than twice the combined totals in Finland, Norway and Denmark (which is by far the most populous country in Scandinavia), and the infection has spread to several retirement homes because the Public Health Agency had not ensured that staff had, and wore, masks, gloves and gowns to protect patients. We do not yet know, therefore, whether no-lockdown strategies work even in countries which, like Sweden, have high social cohesion and low population density.
To try to find out whether Sweden’s strategy of not locking down the country is likely to work, Dr Björn Olsen, Professor of infectious medicine at Uppsala University, recently asked the Swedish Public Health Agency for access to the data on the basis of which it opted against lockdown. He has had no reply. Some 22 experts recently put their names to a very critical op-ed in the Dagens Nyheter, calling for a reappraisal of the policy.
Perhaps the most important question to which we do not yet have an answer is whether those who have recovered the infection are or will remain immune. The World Health Organization (admittedly the least reliable source of information on this infection) now says that immunity among those who have recovered cannot be taken for granted. If that is true, then antibody testing will be a lot less useful than it might have been.
Nor do we know when a vaccine may be found. But let us end with some good news. Researchers at Oxford University are so confident that they have found a workable vaccine that they are producing a million shots even before it has been subjected to clinical trial or approved. They are taking the risk, because they think they have the answer. Let us pray that their confidence is justified.
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It may not rise to the level of an arguable comment …
But here’s a trick worth remembering:
time = log( 2 ) / log( 1 + rate ) …
time = log( 2 ) / log( 1 ⊕ 0.060 ) …
time = 11.86 days
I’m not quibbling with the ’12 days’, as clearly the precision of the estimate is at best 2 figures. At best. But it goes to show how to convert a daily compounding to a doubling time.
The same can be done in reverse, of course. If someone claims 20 day doubling time:
20 = log( 2 ) / 𝒙 … where 𝒙 is the first thing to find. Multiply both sides by 𝒔:
20𝒙 = log( 2 ) … then divide both by ’20’
𝒙 = log( 2 ) ÷ 20;
𝒙 = 0.034657 … now we know 𝒙 To turn that back into a daily compounding:
rate = exp( 𝒙 ) – 1
rate = exp( 0.034657 ) – 1
rate = 0.0353; … and of course % is moving the decimal 2 places to the right
rate = 3.53%
Useful? You betcha!
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
A handy trick for the guessing the increase in new UK-wide hospitalised infections on day d compared to the previous day is 5000*exp(-(d/15.7)²) where d is the number of days after 11th April 2020. This is known as Farr’s Law. To the extent that the law has any predictive skill it gives the number dropping to below 1000 around 1st May. Viruses are more predictable than politicians!
You write “immunity among those who have recovered cannot be taken for granted. If that is true, then antibody testing will be a lot less useful than it might have been.”
I am guessing that the reported re-infection cases are largely among people whose initial tests were falsely positive, who picked up a below-detection level infection during treatment, and then developed the disease.
This series of articles by Lord Monckton has completely shaken my faith in his information gathering, graphs and conclusions. He claimed in this one written yesterday, April 18, “In the United States, the growth rate in deaths is 10.3% compound per day: in Canada, 12.9%. If those rates were to persist, deaths in these countries would double in six or seven days.” At the same time New York the state most affected by “Covid-19” released data showing that actual deaths had dropped off dramatically, and this is even with the severe padding of the numbers.
In the eastern part of King County where my wife and I live and the first place in the country to have deaths things peaked and hospitals got back to normal over 3 weeks ago. Christopher Monckton is cherry picking the data he uses to support his opinion that the severe over reactions by government officials should not be eased. Apparently he has adopted the tactics of the global warming alarmists.
It was known before I started my PhD back in the 1990’s that there are ways of suppressing T Cell-mediated inflammation with peptide analogues of relevant antigenic peptides. Perhaps if they had payed a bit more attention to this, and a bit less to global warming, then some such problems might already be solved.
Christopher
You observe, “If those rates were to persist, …” That is improbable! You have a well-established trend, which is not unlike the trend following the peak of seasonal flues. You are implying that COVID-19 is behaving differently from seasonal flu, based on current doubling times. It isn’t. It is just that you are on different places on the curves. The seasonal flu(es) appear to have peaked in February, whereas, COVID-19 appears to be peaking mid- to late-April in the US. The trends tell us that we are at least past the inflection points, if not past the peaks. How about projecting doubling times on a graph, based on the history of the trends?
Christopher,
You shared the opinion of WHO that, “… immunity among those who have recovered cannot be taken for granted.” Think about that for a minute. In the worst-case scenario, if infection does NOT convey immunity, then there is little hope that, even if some sort of vaccine is developed, it can be expected to be useful! Everyone should prepare for the possibility that there will be no vaccine come to our rescue. Given that possibility, then the Monday Morning Quarterbacks will say that the lockdowns were not useful in giving us more time to develop a vaccine.
Because we cannot shelter in place forever, the next most viable solution is to develop cures for the virus. (Yes, I’ve heard about the magic potion known as HCQ!)
Personally, I think that WHO has again demonstrated its incompetence. The large number of asymptomatic cases, and the fact that most that show symptoms recover, suggests that the immune system of healthy people are able to defeat the virus. While mutations may allow subsequent infections, making a vaccine problematic, we should probably continue to explore vaccines.
I’m anticipating the cases in the southern hemisphere to explode in a couple of months, and for the northern hemisphere to experience a second wave next Fall. I hope we aren’t dumb enough to add injury to insult by imposing a second wave of lockdowns. Social distancing should be adequate if we don’t yet have cures.
Brazil appears to be having a strong upsurge in cases.
This is not exactly reassuring that heat will stop this virus.
Other reports suggest that counting in places like Ecuador is very bad, and many are getting the virus.
Places with malaria not having high infection rates may have more to do with lack of roads and travel infrastructure, which limits the chances of rapid dissemination and transmission, and they are also places that seem likely to have less than stellar accounting and reporting of cases.
Nicholas
As to Brazil, I have seen little about where the hot spots are. My guess is that it is in the slums with high population densities and poor sanitation. If the conditions are conducive for catching and spreading the virus, then perhaps the environment can have a greater impact than the climate.
We should know in 2 or 3 months whether there is a seasonal aspect to COVID-19, when it starts to cool off in Australia and NZ.
“Last week, as figures released by the Public Health Agency of Sweden indicated that 1,333 people had now died of coronavirus, the country’s normally unflappable state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell admitted that the situation in care homes was worrying.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-sweden-as-elderly-pay-price-for-coronavirus-strategy?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR39yhx6UMREePb_7g24oNDughB92BvMDnlx_24MWekLtscqWBCBgVwl-90