lumberjack wrote:lumberjack wrote:And in South Africa we see the spike happening with the first cases of non-traveler/non-contact reported taking the "published" infection count up from 62 to 85... My take on it, add 00 to those figures.
Just released the overnight figure in SA has hit 116...
Welcome to exponential growth zone, doubling between 2 and 3 days.
Hope your gov is smarter than european ones were - Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and Thailand were able to stop it at least in the 6 weeks after first infections early on, South Korea had exponential growth/hidden super-spreaders, but was able to curb growth curve. They all had learned from SARS-1.
More to the point: your data hints that hemisphere/summer or winter at the moment is not a deciding factor - although one has to keep in mind that currently virus has the big advantage of encountering zero herd immunity. As no data is available on duration of immunity, and mutatlon rate of SARS-2, there is a high probability that another virus will enter symbiosis with our genomes - decreasing its growth rate as herd immunity grows, thereby not so many clumped patients, which will lessen death rate of critically ill patients probably latest in 2021 - if there is a hemispheral effect currently masked by ease of spreading, next phase could be more massive after summer in northern hemisphere.
Virus able to spread before showing symptoms, and often with no debilitating symptoms, already moved far into human population and thereby save from drastic measures applied to bird and swine flu carrying hosts - buy stocks in first companies developing proven to be working vaccines..
Good chance, that unknown spread in chinese population made it already impossible to stomp out after mid-February, but Western countries really blew it on this one - I see no exception except some being lucky of not being in center of harms way. Uncertain if govs should be blamed more or citizen stupidity would have reigned supreme IAC - some of the currently hard hit countries
had issued rules and regulations early on not taken seriously, like Switzerland with high infection per capita rate. What to expect was clear on Chinese data alone, even if they were reporting with some bias. I give the chinese much more credit, as they were first to encounter a black swan (again).
We nerds should consider us lucky, as at least some work can be done via remote - even if the particular group of .dbf afficionados probably has a higher risc due to correlation with age.
regards & best wishes from clamping down Mainhatten (the city, not the typist)
thomas