The latest figures should make for bracing reading for any politican who has not realised how critical it is to implement a lockdown early. First, look at how rapidly case numbers have increased in the USA and Europe - Spain is now tracking China's outbreak, and the USA looks to be on a materially worse track. NB this chart only shows the first 17 days after case numbers reached 100 in each country - Italy is now at over 50,000 cases. Click the image above for the full summary. Second, remember how long it has taken countries to move from 100 cases to 1000 cases:
You know the rest... remote_working_toolkit_-_pottinger.pdfIsolation is a team sport! I've been working flexibly and remotely for five plus years, ever since my family moved to New York. So I've had plenty of experience of what works and what doesn't when it comes to remote working. As millions - maybe tens of millions - try this for the first time, I've summarised my thoughts in this note - click the image for more. Please feel free to share! Mostly more of the same in the data overnight. Outbreaks across Europe and US expanding rapidly, whilst politicians scrabble to catch up. Lock down hard and lock down early is the right response, but few have grasped this nettle. In Australia, ambivalence on measures and foolish complacency by some in government has contributed to an accelerating growth rate, as shown below. This is a log scale chart, so a straight line = exponential growth. If the slope of the line increases, then the growth rate is increasing. Stay home, keep your kids out of school. The policy will catch up pretty quickly. Click the image above for a more detailed analysis. Much more bad news than good news in today's figures. Full summary available from this link.
Looking through the overnight numbers from WHO, the conclusions are unsurprising.
Good morning. Figures in overnight (from the very helpful Johns Hopkins dashboard - see button on the right of the page or at the bottom of the blog on mobile) should be a wake-up call for any leaders that are not taking this serious. The outbreak in Spain is now fast approaching a "China" track, and the US has accelerated beyond that. I'm due to return to my home in New York at the end of this week, so I watch these numbers with particular concern for all my fellow New Yorkers. Click the image for a full update. The good news is that most of what is needed you can do yourself, irrespective of political leadership.
Another day, and new data that still tells more or less the same story - European outbreaks are expanding rapidly. Transmission rates in Italy have slowed slightly, but remain high. Spain is even more concerning (blue bars below) - tellingly it is now on a materially worse track than Korea. All of this points to the urgent need for complete lock-downs in any country with more than a handful of cases. Much of the action seems to be happening bottom up - NYC schools were encouraging kids to stay home before the system was officially closed on Sunday evening. Click the image below or here for a more detailed summary. Our decision to move to 100% remote working was ultimately triggered by an excellent article published on Medium by Tomas Pueyo. You can find it at this link. Most importantly, this included an analysis of actual infections in Hubei, showing how these ran ahead of reported case numbers by a factor of nearly ten times. Of course this should come as no surprise - few people report to a doctor at the sign of the first sniffle. The implications, however, are serious and align with current experience in the US, UK and Australia. If you have 100 to 200 cases reported, the likelihood is that you have 1000 to 2000 active cases in the community, mostly undiagnosed.
The implication of this, is that you are already at or beyond the point where urgent action to control the spread of the outbreak is essential. If you do not act, the hospital system will be over-run in a matter of days - as was exactly the case in China, Iran and Italy, and will likely occur in other countries. The good news is that the data also shows that imposition of a total lockdown has a near immediate effect in limiting further increases in the number of actual infections, though reported numbers of cases will increase significantly for a period of around a fortnight. The outbreak continues to accelerate in Europe - actual figures observed today were broadly higher than predicted using reductions in transmission rates achieved in (eg) Korea (see earlier post or notes on sheet for methodology). Please click the image below for the full file.
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