agip wrote:
Here's an interesting and positive fact:
Iran, Italy and Spain are the worst victims of this thing.
I thought I'd take a look at what the rest of the world looks like, if you remove those three countries from the stats. They total just 2% of the global population, after all.
I only looked at numbers of deaths, because testing data/case counts are meaningless.
The bottom line is that over the past week, 85% of the deaths have occurred in those three countries. That's a pretty stable number. Not increasing, not decreasing.
Only yesterday did the rest of the world have a 100 death day, excluding Italy, Iran, Spain. Very small numbers of deaths outside Italy, Spain, Iran.
Stop the hotspots.
Flame away, my brothers and sisters. I'm sensitive to your criticisms. But I think this is an important idea that should get out there.
Oh agip. Oh agip. There is simply no limit to the number of incorrect ways that one can look at the numbers. Just like there is no limit to the number of stupid things one can say. But people get tired of slapping down the infinitely many stupid things that Sally says and eventually just ignore him. But here I am, day after day, correcting the incorrect ways that you have to look at the numbers. It is tiring. But I love you, man. I just wish you had even a tiny sense of what numbers mean. Just a smidgen of a fraction of a bit of sense. This is exhausting.
Anyway, here goes:
agip: "The bottom line is that over the past week, 85% of the deaths have occurred in those three countries. That's a pretty stable number. Not increasing, not decreasing. "
I know that you have no numerical sense so you don't understand the implications of what you just said. But here is the direct implication of what you just said:
The rate of growth for COVID-19 IS EXACTLY THE SAME in the rest of the world as it is in your three "hot spot" states (Iran, Spain, Italy). That follows directly from your observation. Repeat after me: "Agip just noticed that the rate of growth for COVID-19 is exactly the same all over the world as it is in Iran, Italy and Spain."
I know that this will not be obvious to you. So let me help you out here. Consider two sequences of numbers:
2 0
3 0
5 0
7 0
10 0
15 0
23 0
34 2
51 3
77 5
115 7
173 10
259 15
389 23
584 34
876 51
1314 77
1971 115
Now consider any row, each row having two numbers. First row is 2 0. Tenth row is 77 5. Last row is 1971 115.
Now, imagine that these two columns represent deaths in two different countries, Country A and Country B.
Observation: Look at the tenth row, Country A accounted for 94% (77 out of 82) of all the deaths on that day. Now look at the last day shown. Country A accounted for 94% (1,971 out of 2,086) of all the deaths on that day as well! And if you check the days in between you will see that this is a very stable pattern - Country A accounts for near 94% of all deaths each day!
Country A is a "Hot Spot"!
Hmmmm, did you also notice that column A and column B are precisely the same sequence of numbers? One just got started a week later than the other.
I repeat! There is no such thing as a "hot spot". Having fewer deaths today is a matter of weeks, not magic. And seeing a fairly stable percentage of deaths come from 3 nations demonstrates that EVERYONE is on the same curve - not that something different is going on in those 3 nations.
Now please, try to find the mental discipline to understand this. Like I said, this is getting exhausting.
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Now, I will quote you again (I know you hate that - sorry).
agip (Mar 12): "Outside of the hotspots Italy, Iran and Spain the death count is still in 1-5 people per day range, which is very, very low. This is good news, yes? Why would we think that is not good news?"
Today is Mar 16 - only four days later. The number of new deaths today in Germany, France, USA, Switzerland, UK, Netherlands, Sweden and Belgium are, respectively, 2, 21, 18, 5, 20, 4, 4, 6. I think that it would be reasonable to say today, "Outside of the hotspots Italy, Iran and Spain the death count is now in the 4 - 20 people per day range. 4x higher than they were 4 days ago!"
This is terrifying. Are you still incapable of seeing it? Nine days from now, current trends persisting, this same statement will be "Outside of the hotspots Italy, Iran and Spain the death count is now in the 10 - 60 people per day range." And you will be saying, "Still seems low."
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Agip, please try to wake up.