Ambar wrote:Case counts are important as case fatalities is a lagging indicator.
Yes they are a lagging indicator. But by two weeks or so, whereas case counts in Spain/ France have been rising steadily for 3 months now. Is it possible for the lag to be as much as 2 months?
India first hit four digit no. of daily deaths on Aug. 9th (there were adjustments before which pushed the number to 4 digits, I'm not counting those). With the expected lag of 2 weeks between cases and deaths, and given the rise in cases from ~62,000 on Aug. 9th, to ~98,000 on Sep. 16th, the expected peak in daily deaths would be 2,015. If the lag were 1 month, the expected peak in deaths would be 3,720. If the lag were 2 months, the expected peak daily deaths would be 9,600. Daily deaths seem to have peaked at 1,200. Of course, differences in testing need to be accounted for, those are a lot trickier to do than they seem, and frankly, I have no clue how to go about that, so I'm leaving the analysis as above.
This analysis is based on case counts and death counts between Aug. 9th to Sep. 16th. What happens from now on is independent of the above - it is a separate dynamic. The key is that what was expected between mid Aug. to mid Sep., based on data from April to Aug., did not quite work out - the actual scenario was better than expected. And if one factors in lags of more than a month, the actual scenario would have been horrific, in terms of deaths. Again, "things could still take a turn for the worse from here" is of course a possibility, but it is a separate issue here-on, it doesn't change what was said above.
A similar case was observed for the USA. Based on these observations, it seems Spain/ France will not do significantly worse than they are currently doing, in terms of peak daily deaths. This is just data modeling, there could be vagaries and unknowns, not to mention (God forbid) evolution and development of a fresh and wholly different nightmare scenario, but I hope to be right on this (not for ego issues either).
Spain's daily deaths are now above 200 for 4 consecutive days and rising,
Daily deaths for Spain for the past ten days, based on the source posted earlier (Johns Hopkins):
Sep 29/2020---------0
Sep 30/2020---------380
Oct 1/2020----------182
Oct 2/2020----------113
Oct 3/2020----------0
Oct 4/2020----------0
Oct 5/2020----------139
Oct 6/2020----------261
Oct 7/2020----------76
Oct 8/2020----------126
Spain is one of those countries which reports an initial number, and then heavily readjusts and redistributes (both cases and deaths) in the coming week. Some days they report "0" numbers, and then make up for that in the next day or two. Which is why it is better to go by 7-day averages, even there, one has to wait a week or so to get a fuller picture until the readjustments are done.
UK's hospitalization this week is up 40%,
I take back what I said about UK earlier, that country is indeed still in a precarious situation, hope it works out the way it did for Spain/ France.
As for Spain/ France, we can wait a week or so and see, my guess (based on the data so far) is that they are past the second peak as well. UK still has some ways to go. This is not an ego issue (that I want to be proved right), it has to do with some deep questions I've had about media-generated realities, and whether the experts really know as much as we think they know. No disrespect to the experts, just that our knowledge is more limited than we think.
I try to see the positives as well, I just believe it's healthier that way. If the positive doesn't pan out and the negative again happens, well, find a way to deal with it, that's life.
The one thing which makes me feel that there won't be a 2nd wave in India is because of our indiscipline, with the exception of trains and schools it is business as usual, packed restaurants, bars, streets, weddings, metro trains you name it.
I'm trying not to be too hard on commoners in India, saar. Their compulsions are different, death by COVID is rather uncertain, death by starvation and loss of livelihood stares them in the face every day. The ones whom I have no sympathy for, are the party-lunatics in "advanced" countries, who crave their socializing and binge-drinking and just have to get their dose of it, COVID or no COVID. Of course, packed restaurants and bars in India are the same thing, but streets, metros, even weddings - I can kind of understand that.
The terrible thing though is many in vulnerable categories like aged or people with chronic comorbidities may end up succumbing to the virus yet before it is done. Btw, IMA has revised the list of Physicians who have died in the line of duty, it now upto 515 as of last week. Again, these are reported cases and the Indian medical assoc. accepts that the actual numbers could be lot higher. One thing that stood out are doctors with Bengali last names , it is not surprising given how late WB govt was to even acknowledge the community spread of covid in the state. And given the abysmal infrastructure, one can only guess what the real count must be in West Bengal and other similar states.
I agree, deaths of doctors could and should have been avoided, and the vulnerable could have been much better protected.
