Are we learning anything from India?

The situation in India is heartrending. Here’s a chart of the top 10 countries in cumulative cases with US leading the world, but note that sharp upturn in the climb of cases (purple line is India). That sharp upturn is scary.

All international data is from Wikipedia. See box below.

Sources of Data

WORLD : Cases and deaths from Wikipedia website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_by_country_and_territory

US and STATES : Five main sources of data are available – Wikipedia, COVID Tracking Project, CDC, JHU, and HHS

COVID Tracking Project: The COVID Tracking Project was a collaborative effort of free labor overseen by The Atlantic. This project ended on 3/7/2021. The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project was provided under Common Creative license “CC BY-NC-4.0” and covered cases, deaths, hospitalization, and positivity, amongst other data.
API: https://covidtracking.com/api/v1/states/daily.csv
Table: daily

CDC: CDC has become a replacement for the COVID Tracking Project for me although the data will often come in a few days later. Hospitalization comes in a week later. I’m tracking cases, deaths, hospitalization, and positivity.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 Response. COVID-19 Case Surveillance Public Data Access, Summary, and Limitations
Table: rows

API:
Cases and deaths: https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/9mfq-cb36/rows.csv
Hospitalization: https://beta.healthdata.gov/api/views/g62h-syeh/rows.csv (Good data doesn’t start until about 7/15/2020)
Testing: https://beta.healthdata.gov/api/views/j8mb-icvb/rows.csv
Positivity: https://beta.healthdata.gov/api/views/j8mb-icvb/rows.csv

John Hopkins University (JHU): I rarely show these sets of data; I mostly use Wikipedia or CDC but sometimes I like to reference the JHU.

Please cite our Lancet Article for any use of this data in a publication (link)
Provided by Johns Hopkins University
Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE):

https://systems.jhu.edu/

Terms of Use:

1. This data set is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) by the Johns Hopkins University on behalf of its Center for Systems Science in Engineering. Copyright Johns Hopkins University 2020.

2. Attribute the data as the “COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University” or “JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data” for short, and the

url: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19.

3. For publications that use the data, please cite the following publication: “Dong E, Du H, Gardner L. An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. Lancet Inf Dis. 20(5):533-534. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30120-1”

Website https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19

HHS: Hospitalization data for US – can be US level, state level or county level

url: https://healthdata.gov/api/views/anag-cw7u/rows.csv

Image 1: India’s sharp rise amongst top 10 countries in cumulative cases

India did so well in January, February, March while the US and Europe suffered from skyrocketing cases accruing from holiday get togethers. I actually thought India had acquitted themselves very well and was going to come off of the pandemic in good shape.

I read some articles that reasoned the India did so well because 1) the Indian population is predominantly young (average age may be around 27), 2) the population may be better able to handle the virus due to high levels of pollution in the country, and 3) the country may have a large number of people already inoculated from the effects of the virus through prior infections.

India believed those reasons too, so life returned to normal: they held political rallies, they gathered for their usual celebratory festivals and they ran around maskless.

Image 2: India overshadows all other countries in the world in daily cases.

The worst country in each continent (Europe, Asia, North and South America)

In image 2, I pulled the currently worst performing country in each continent – Europe, Asia, North and South America. In Europe that would be France and South America would be Brazil. Both Turkey and India are part of Asia but I decided to add in Turkey just to show how India distances far beyond anyone. India is even superseding the US and shows no end to the rise. The situation looks dire.

Here’s another look at how extreme India is:

Image 3: Daily cases by continents

What should we learn from India? India got down to close to 10K and even occasionally dipped below it, and still, they are now undergoing this surprise surge.

So, what should we learn from India?

WE CANNOT LET DOWN OUR GUARD!!!

Or until maybe we get enough people vaccinated to reach herd immunity. There are simply too many viruses mutating and some appears to be more contagious and more deadly. The Indian variant that overtook India appears to be more deadly and there are fears that the vaccine does not work against India’s variant.

WE CANNOT LET DOWN OUR GUARD!!!! So, we need to continue with the social distancing and the masks for just a little longer.

Now for some new daily cases graphs for the US. The source of data comes from the CDC. See the box at end of post.

Image 4: Midwest

Image 6: South

Image 5: Northeast

Image 7: West

It may be hard to see but it looks like Michigan and Minnesota broke their upward climb and they are just started to come back down. The Northeast also appears to have arrested their climb. In the South, Florida looks suspect but it does not have the U profile like Michigan had. Out in the West, both Washington and Oregon appear to be showing rising cases. Oregon has that scary U profile that Michigan was undergoing; i.e., the rise is steeper than normal.

Otherwise, everything is simmering down.

But LET’S NOT LET DOWN OUR GUARDS!!!!

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