The COVID-19 pandemic

[tomh009]

Average daily increase in cases over the last 7 days, preceding 7 days and the 7 days before that (oldest period first), selected countries (from Johns Hopkins University data).

• Australia: 3% 16% 21%
  
• Canada: 15% 15% 22%
  
• China: 1% 0% 0%
  
• France: 41% 36% 22%
  
• Germany: 35% 35% 27%
  
• Iran: 56% 31% 11%
  
• Italy: 41% 23% 16%
  
• Japan: 8% 10% 6%
  
• Singapore: 3% 5% 6%
  
• South Korea: 30% 10% 2%
  
• Spain: -- 35% 42%
  
• Sweden: 46% 47% 26%
  
• Taiwan: 5% 2% 1%
  
• UK: 22% 34% 23%
  
• USA: -- 6% 75%
  

You can see China, South Korea and Taiwan got things under control, with much internal control.Taiwan's only new cases recently have been all travelers from abroad.

At the 15-20% range, where Australia and Canada have been, things are tense but for the most part still manageable. Once the daily rates climb into the 30% range, things start getting out of hand very quickly and the system can no longer cope. France, Germany, Italy (before the lockdown), Spain, Sweden are examples of this.

And then there are the explosive growth rates, such as Iran (56%/day in the last earliest sample period) and USA (75%/day in the last week). Simply not sustainable. The US is averaging 500+ new cases every day over the last five days, and 100+ of those in New York. What's the real number of cases?