Corona, when shall it end? And other interesting stats

With the whole world constantly chatting about the Coronavirus, with all the media screaming hell and doom, with many the scientific institutions publishing their statistics, between all that madness, there is something missing here: common sense.

For those looking for news about the Coronavirus, they have the following choices:

The problem with those websites is that those statistics give you information, but based on who's behind the presentation of that data.

Medical oriented statistics present data about the facts of the infection, and the models they have created (how terrible, how many people get infected, how long it takes, how many die and other projections. Many, if not all, are contradicting each other. Some models claim that it takes years before the infections will stop, others claim millions of death, others claim it will never be gone, others claim that it will be gone in two months, others a year, etc.

Also, don't forget, dear reader, you've Internet and you have access to the same sources of raw data as those specialists have. You can download them to your computer, load them into a spreadsheet and voila, start analyzing the data.

That's what I've done. Even that I also created several models for several publications and agencies, I tried here to be different. Instead of building wonderful statistical models, I went looking for simple trends. I wanted to know how long the coronavirus would take before it would disappear. That's exactly what I did.

Common sense tells us that this infectious disease has a start, a duration and an end, just like in an American movie. Simple, not?

And of course it's true, when you look at all the raw data from observations and reports about the Coronavirus, you can look for specific common sense information.

Above you see a table with 14 countries I took as an example from all that Coronavirus data. I was not interested in the actual numbers (as usual), but I was interested in the dates. I was asking the following questions:

  1. When exactly started the first cases of the virus?

  2. When were the highest number of new cases reported?

  3. How many days before the peak (number of reported new cases) was reached after the first infection?

  4. How many days after the peak until now (or in this example, the 24th of March 2020).

And from there, some interesting information can be derived.

Look at South Korea. The cases started to come at January 20th, 2020. The number of new cases reported reached its peak at March third, 2020. Since then, 21 days of decreased new cases happened (until the 24th of March 2020). With this number, South Korea is free of the virus at the 13th of April 2020.

Look at China. The cases started to come at January 13th, 2020. The number of new cases reported reached its peak at February 12th, 2020. Since then, 41 days of decreased new cases happened (until the 24th of March 2020). With this number, China is free of the virus (according claims of their authorities).

Whatever the truth of the Chinese reports about the coronavirus, it's about the trend.

With the same numbers, you see countries like Canada, Israel, Netherlands, Spain, UK, US reporting a constant increase of new cases until today. To calculate anything in this stage is hard to do. There is no clear peak of reported new cases then only the highest numbers reported of the 24th of March 2020. It's clear and logical that the peak didn't happen yet for those countries.

For example, the US reached its reported peak in new reported cases of the Coronavirus yesterday. Today or from that moment it's likely that that number grows. If not, and that continues the following days, it'll be likely that the curve of the reported new infections is flat-lining.

But countries like Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Spain reported a small decrease in the number of newly reported Coronavirus infections (or with other words new cases reported).

For example Italy. Reported cases started at January 30th and it reached its peak at the 21st of March. If this trend continues like this, Italy will be virus free at the first of May 2020. The coronavirus ravaged through the Italian population for 38 days.

For those countries it's still too early to say that their curves are being flat-lined or in the process to do so.

And there are more trends to discover from the raw data.

The funny think about China and their falsification or manipulating their data about the Coronavirus is the number of death reported in Hong Kong, before the first Coronavirus infections were reported. also, China reported death at the same time the number of newly infected people. A sure sign of the manipulation of their supplied data.

Based on the data available, I can calculate the following numbers, which are not final and very likely to change.

  • We still have about 40 days to go for the majority of the countries have the Coronavirus under control.

  • The pandemic takes about 60 (between 26 (Singapore) and 71 (China)) days.

  • South Korea will be clear of the virus at 13th of April 2020. The rest of the 13 countries in this example between 30th of April 2020 and the 4th of May.

    • The last date is for sure wrong, because in many countries in this example have not reached their peak.

For those countries, which haven't reach their peaks, the following:

Countries like Canada and Israel, their reported cases are doubling each two days. The US will see their number of reported cases doubling every three days. The UK sees their number of reported cases doubling every four days.

For countries like Italy, Germany, Hong Kong, Germany, France, those numbers will be dramatically less. The number of newly reported infections or cases will drop over the course of days. A similar trend you can see in China and South Korea reporting.

And as I said, it's all about a bunch of trend and common sense.

Download the spreadsheet with the data yourself here.