Journal of the Virus Year: My experiences with the virus: April 4, 2020

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/

The count on the worldwide number of Coronavirus COVID-19 just went over a million a few days ago so I thought more about numbers than usual. The graph above was from the day before the number went over a million. This particular website has hundreds of graphs of every kind and possible description but it also has a significant section on the virus. Here in the United States, the number of new cases daily is increasing with a similar curve. Here is the graph for the U.S. for the same day as the one above.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

One interesting fact that is dramatically shown by the graph of the total cases in the U.S. is that the increase in the infections did not appear un about the 16th of March, only a few days ago and the number of new cases is rising every day.

Here is a graph of the world total from April 4th. You will note that the graph looks identical except for the increased numbers.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/

Although I have not gotten sick with the virus (yet), because of my age and past experience with lung problems including, but not limited to, asthma, I am definitely in the risk category and so I am staying strictly inside except for short solitary excursions and avoid almost all contact with the outside world. The remaining contact is from about, at least, six feet or more. Fortunately, our weather has been mostly beautiful and we have been well stocked with the essentials from long before the virus became a problem. 

Until those curves shown above start taking a decided turn for more level, we are in for a long haul.  I am still hearing people say that there is nothing to worry about and that the whole pandemic thing will be over by the end of the month or whatever. I am not a statistician nor am I involved in the medical side of the disease but I am an attorney with years of trial experience looking at "evidence." I would hate to be asked to argue a case for an early end to this particular pandemic. I would also hate to be an expert witness trying to predict how many deaths might eventually occur from the COVID-19 virus and its variants. It is hard to see the spacing between the dots in these graphs. Here is another graph from the same website that shows the increase in the number of cases each day.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/

You might wonder why the numbers seem to go up for a while and then go down and then jump up. These are not really changes in the number of new instances of the disease, they are changes in the reporting. For example, as of the writing of this post, the State of California is in a testing crisis. Here is a quote from an article in the Atlantic, entitled "Private Labs Are Fueling a New Coronavirus Testing Crisis, Backlogs at private laboratories have ballooned, making it difficult to treat suffering patients and contain the pandemic."

Though the problem is national in scope, California is its known epicenter. Over the past week, the most populous state in the union—where the country’s first case of community transmission was identified, in late February—has managed to complete an average of only 2,136 tests each day, far fewer than other similarly populous states, according to our tracking data. Yet California also reports that more than 57,400 people have pending test results. Tens of thousands of Californians have been swabbed for the virus, but their samples have not yet been examined in a lab.

What will happen to the Daily New Cases number when the California test results catch up with the backlog if they ever do? This is what is called a "boxcar effect" with the numbers jumping and falling due to reporting failure. 

As long as the number of new cases continues to increase, the effects of the virus will continue to get worse.