| Different countries are not so much a matter of "handling it well / poorly" (with a few exceptions), but "earlier / later in the game". Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are the notable exceptions. They've controlled the epidemic well. For other countries, the number of cases, or quite probably consistently, the number of deaths noted, is a more accurate measure of overall surveillance and spread. At a ~1% mortality rate, each death corresponds to roughly 100 cases, two weeks ago. Growth over 14 days, based on confirmed cases has been increasing at about 100x, though that likely indicates increased monitoring and detection of previously cryptic (undetected) cases, not the actual ground-truth growth rate. Adam Kucharski, author of The Rules of Contagion offers a similar logic. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/health/coronavirus-deaths... His book (not yet available in the US): https://www.worldcat.org/title/rules-of-contagion-why-things... I'd though of noting the cumulative deaths per day after 100 cases are noted as more uniform and reliable metric of spread. Bodies are harder to hide than viruses, though countries with poorly-developed medical infrastructure will still lag. I also suspect we now have a case of countries with known COVID-19 epidemics, and countries with unknown epidemics, rather than countries with no actual epidemic. Update: Graph showing cases by country, days after reaching 100 confirmed cases. Note that this only looks at 16 days' cumulative history, China's curve HAS now flattened out. https://joindiaspora.com/posts/cda527b0448101384fd2005056264... |