September Coronavirus Update 2020/09/12
Back in January, I heard about the Coronavirus. In February, I took a look at the data coming in and it was alarming. I told friends and family in February and I posted about it then. It was clear from the data that the spread was exponential. Exponential curves rise very quickly in a way that is counter intuitive. In the real world, curves like this follow a smooth path and this one was sharply upward. I posted various graphs predicting awful numbers and as these things usually go, those numbers were realized.
Mercifully, it has become apparent that the curve has followed its course and we were on the other side of it. Numbers are down and it is in the nature of these types of curve that it will continue on its downward course until it is gone.
The US curve is slightly different and because their numbers are so large they skew global results. The green line shows world figures excluding the US. In either case, the trend is clearly down and out.
You don't need to know the underlying causes to predict what happens next. In the real world, data like this typically follows the pattern sketched out by the curves you see. That is what has happened here.
In Canada, the nature of the curve is similarly trending down. Particular experiences were different in different regions, but the overall trend is the same as the rest of the world.
The raw data for these graphs can be had on github here:
