2020.03.28

Official Numbers:

• 662,073 confirmed infected
• 30,780 confirmed deaths
• 139,426 confirmed recoveries
• 122,666 US
• 92,472 Italy
• 81,999 China
• 73,235 Spain
• 57,695 Germany
• 38,105 France
• 35,408 Iran
• 17,312 United Kingdom
• 14,076 Switzerland
• 9,819 Netherlands
• 9,478 Korea, South
• 9,134 Belgium
• 8,271 Austria
• 7,402 Turkey
• 5,576 Canada
• 5,170 Portugal
• 4,015 Norway
• 3,904 Brazil
• 3,640 Australia
• 3,619 Israel
• 3,447 Sweden
• 2,631 Czechia
• 2,415 Ireland
• 2,366 Denmark
• 2,320 Malaysia
• 1,909 Chile
• 1,831 Luxembourg
• 1,823 Ecuador
• 1,693 Japan
• 1,638 Poland
• 1,495 Pakistan
• 1,452 Romania
• 1,264 Russia
• 1,245 Thailand
• 1,203 Saudi Arabia
• 1,187 South Africa
• 1,167 Finland
• 1,155 Indonesia
• 1,075 Philippines
• 1,061 Greece

Personal

• The first coronavirus-related death in my county. 70 y/o woman with ‘significant underlying health conditions’
• My city has posted a map of confirmed cases broken out by city district. My district has the highest number of confirmed cases, at around 30. It’s ok, I didn’t want to go outside anyway.

Asia

• More stories of a significant number of recovered people re-testing positive. I still believe this is something weird that is not a reinfection. I do not believe that people will get seriously ill from this disease weeks after they’ve already recovered from it

USA

• One of Joe Biden’s advisors died of COVID-19
• Contrary to popular belief, the virus is not a conspiracy that the government is using to keep us all in our homes while they change the batteries in all the birds
• Another sudden death case. I wish we had proper data, because “how many anecdotes did I read about this in the media” is not the way you find out how prevalent this is
• Trump is making suggestions that he might put NY under cordon, the way Wuhan was. I don’t have the link handy but Cuomo is not a fan of this plan. We would be going into politically uncharted waters if anything like that happened. Or, as one friend put it: “the Democrats finally understand the boogaloo”. In all seriousness, shit like this is how you provoke a second civil war, and we don’t really need that on top of our other problems right now. Meanwhile, the disease is established in enough other metro areas that putting a cordon around NY wouldn’t accomplish much.

International

• There’s a new cruise ship. Nobody will let them dock, and four people have died so far.

Science/Medical

• Smokers are much less likely to become severe cases???
• A cat was infected in Belgium. Note that this isn’t simply a case of a cat testing as infected. The cat actually got sick. Seems to be an isolated case, but it happened
• ARBs dramatically reduce the severity of COVID19, maybe?. I have no idea what an ARB is
• Coronavirus pandemic could inflict emotional trauma and PTSD on an unprecidented scale. I get what they’re trying to say but the hyperbolic headline is rather offensive, tbh. The people who survived Spanish Flu didn’t have PTSD? You know, they came out of the most horrendous war the world had ever seen and then bam they get hit with a plague that kills 3% of the planet or whatever. I’m sure this pandemic is causing very real and very severe mental health issues for people, but “unprecidented”? Worse than the institution of slavery? Worse than the impact of the Holocaust? Nuclear weapons? Soviet/Maoist purges? Famine during the siege of Leningrad? The black plague? I could keep going but I hope this illustrates the point. It’s going to be bad but, please, a little perspective.
• Interesting data on comorbidities. It really does look like people who don’t have any underlying health problems have a much brighter prognosis. Interestingly, it’s mostly underlying heart diseases, not lung diseases
• Clinical comments from a doc in New Orleans
• Simulating an epidemic. One of my favourite mathematics youtube channels covering some basic pandemic modelling
• CDC is gonna tell us that actually they were wrong and masks are good