Here’s a question that’s been running in my mind the last few days. Everyone has been saying that the US COVID-19 cases are tracking Italy’s almost exactly, just lagging ten days behind… [thread]
But we all know the US case number is meaningless, because of the lack of tests. It’s clearly much higher than the official number. It could be 10x the official number, no one knows. Just the number of COVID-positive celebrities/athletes makes me think it's much higher.
A far more accurate number is COVID-19 deaths. No doubt there are a few undiagnosed COVID deaths out there, particularly in the early days, but that would likely be true of Italy as well.
And if you compare COVID deaths in Italy ten days ago to where the US is today, it’s a completely different story. As of today, Mar 17, US has 76 deaths total. Ten days ago, Italy had 200.
Of course, the US has more than 5x more people. So adjusted for population size, it’s more like Italy had 200 deaths compared to 15 in the US. So why is the death rate lagging so far behind Italy’s if we are supposedly on the same caseload curve? Genuinely open question.
As others have suggested, there may be something in the demographics of Italy (and perhaps Spain) that tip COVID-19 into full-on crisis mode that won’t necessarily apply to the US. (Coupled with the fact that it happened to hit there first so less preparation.)
Italy’s population is the fifth oldest country in the world, with heavy intergenerational co-habitation; it’s more densely settled than the US (particularly in Lombardy) with a lot of smokers. Northern Italy this time of year is in the climate zone that coronaviruses like.
Just to be clear, I fully support the social distancing programs we’ve put in place around the US, and personally we’ve been effectively sheltering in place in Brooklyn for a week.
But it does seem to me that the least noisy signal right now is the daily new deaths number, and so far at least, that number gives some hope that the U.S. might avoid the worst, if we stay vigilant. Would love to hear what others think.
