COVID-19 News April 4, 2020

I keep trying to write about other things.  I want to write about other things.  But everything else keeps getting overshadowed by The Virus news.

I could more or less write the same things I wrote yesterday.  Another more than 80,000 new cases, bringing in the prospect of reaching the second million cases within the next 10-11 days, from where we are now.

Also, even with the staggering new numbers, nothing has really changed in the shape of the effect of The Virus.  Still just over a quarter of cases have been closed.  Critical hospitalisations still stand at 5% of active cases.  That situation has held steady for two weeks now.  Only the death rate based on closed cases continues to climb – now at 21% for the first time.

I don’t want to frighten anyone, although perhaps some frightening statistics are what is needed as a world perspective moderator, but the final death rate for MERS (of which there are still scattered and sporadic outbreaks: https://www.who.int/emergencies/mers-cov/en/ ), if you remember, stood at around 36%.

I will provide the link again to the Worldometers coronavirus page.

Where to from here?  If the trajectory of The Virus continues on the same lines for another month – and all the talk is that this will take at least six months or more before the crisis is over – then we will be looking at another 4 million cases at least by early May.  The medical world is struggling now.  What will it be like then, a month from now, with a critical caseload of, I guess, at least some 200,000 and perhaps a quarter of a million? And I think I am estimating conservatively here, based solely on current figures. Any sudden upward change in those figures would blow these estimates out of the water.