Questions for the knowledgeable and stats obsessed

[manicinsomniac]

Anyone able to shed any light on these burning questions? I'm addicted to the WHOl website and finding it both terrifying but also interesting.

1. It isn't just Germany with a low death rate. Why would it be so (comparatively compared to numbers of cases) low in USA and China. Are they better at identifying cases? This surprised me with the USA.

2. Why have so few people recovered in the UK and Netherlands? It's making our death rates astronomical. In other countries where numbers starting taking off at the same time several thousand have recovered. But we've only got 135 and the Netherlands 3?!

3. Am I right in thinking our trajectory is more like France than Italy?Our deaths:cases ratio is much more like theirs than Italy's.

I know none of this important and may even be unhelpful. I think looking at the numbers helps me feel more in control, even though I'm not. I've been obsessed with the daily numbers for about a month now.

I dont know any answers sorry but I would really like to follow this. Also would like to understand why they are saying no one has got immunity to this but surely they must have so many high profile cases that one person in a family has it but the partner has tested negative. For such a contagious virus why are some people just not catching it. I dont understand.

Whatishappening I once saw a really interesting documentary about the plague (NOT comparing Covid-19 to the plague!!) and they were saying that there was a percentage of the population who definitely had natural immunity or they would certainly have caught it. They were trying to trace descendants of plague doctors who didn't contract plague and test them to see if they had something in their genes that gave them more resistance to illness. I can't remember the conclusion or the title though

I really dont get why this isn't a focus. Anytime I Google asymptomatic it just states these are the people that are likely to spread the virus as they dont know. Which I totally understand but surely they are the most significant people in this situation what do they have that the rest of us need

Are they even recording/reporting the recovered rates? The U.K. number hasn’t changed for at least a few days.

That's a good question. Maybe not. Until a couple of days ago it consistently said that only 20 cases were serious/critical despite doctors' facebook posts saying that their ICUs were bursting. I didn't know who to believe. But then WHO numbers of serious suddenly jumped.

Thanks son I'm surprised the US are testing widely though. I thought it was very expensive for people to pay for a test.

Not anymore. It was 3k. Then an awesome woman senator sat in Congress and made them make it free. Brilliant!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52056111 did you see this article, full of statistics for you!

No, I hadn't. That's really interesting; thanks.