COVID-19 Update

Coronavirus mapped and quantified:

UPDATED 1/15: Friday’s numbers

New cases, world per capita.

The number of new cases reported across the world on Friday was 761K, 9% lower than last Friday.

34 countries were in the red zone (143 cases per million population per day). The highest were:

Portugal 1047
Lebanon 904
Spain 860
UK 819

Fatalities, world per capita.

Across the globe, 15,050 fatalities were reported on Friday, which is 2% lower than last Friday.

32 countries were in the red zone (3 fatalities per million population in a single day). The top three were:

UK 19
Slovakia 19
Portugal 16

28 countries were in the red zone in both criteria (new cases and new fatalities): the USA, the UK, Czechia, Russia, Italy, Canada, Tunisia, South Africa, Israel, Switzerland, Lebanon, Colombia, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia, France, Brazil, Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Austria, Poland, Belgium, Ukraine, Chile, Hungary, Bolivia and Mexico.

Testing rates, USA.

The USA reported a positive testing rate of 10.7% on Friday, bringing the current 7-day testing percentage to 11.9%.

31 states were in the CDC red zone (10% positivity) on Friday. The eleven listed below are the states that doubled the red line. (The plus and minus signs indicate the direction since the previous report. Multiple signs indicate the number of consecutive reports in which the state has moved in that direction)

Idaho 42 – – –
Alabama 38 – – – – –
Pennsylvania 38 – –
Iowa 37 – – – – – –
Kansas 33
South Dakota 30
Mississippi 27 – –
Utah 23
Kentucky 24 +
Georgia 22 +
Oklahoma 22 –

New cases, USA

There were about 248K new cases reported in the USA on Friday, 18% less than the same day last week.

49 states, Puerto Rico and D.C. were in the CDC red zone (a rate of 1000 patients per million inhabitants per week, or 143 per million for a single day). Two states topped every country in the world:

Kansas 1366
Arizona 1257

The following table represents the USA’s daily “new cases” total in thousands. Red backgrounds indicate there was no decrease versus the same day of the previous week. Red numerals indicate an increase over the weekly average from the previous week.


5 Weeks Ago 4 Weeks Ago 3 Weeks Ago 2 Weeks Ago Last Week This Week
Monday 199 199 200 187 190 215
Tuesday 208 200 199 195 226 222
Wednesday 225 251 232 235 261 236
Thursday 218 231 193 228 274 230
Friday 247 255 99 166 302 248
Saturday 220 189 161 232 250
Sunday 188 188 128 194 213
AVERAGE 215 216 173 205 245


Fatalities, USA.

Friday’s new fatality count was 3,805, which down 3% from last Friday.

43 states and Puerto Rico were in the red zone (3 or more fatalities in a day, per million population). Three states topped every country in the world:

Kansas 50
Arizona 25
South Carolina 20

27 States were in the triple red zone (testing positivity, new cases, new fatalities): Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

The Washington computer model now projects 567,000 American deaths from the coronavirus before May 1, but with a decline in the daily death toll beginning about February 1.

The table below shows the USA’s daily COVID fatalities. Red backgrounds indicate an increase over the same day of the previous week. Red numerals indicate an increase over the weekly average from the previous week.

5 Weeks Ago 4 Weeks Ago 3 Weeks Ago 2 Weeks Ago Last
Week		 This Week
Monday 1,508 1,619 1,841 1,966 1,987 1,964
Tuesday 2,913 2,976 3,376 3,398 3,499 4,259
Wednesday 3,243 3,614 3,401 3,880 4,089 4,098
Thursday 2,974 3,277 2,835 3,438 4,134 4,069
Friday 3,019 2,794 1,197 2,129 3,914 3,805
Saturday 2,309 2,556 1,408 2,107 3,235
Sunday 1,379 1,458 1,215 1,387 1,792
AVERAGE 2,478 2,595 2,182 2,615 3,237

ADDED 12/11: FDA authorizes the first coronavirus vaccine

ADDED 12/7: Pfizer tells U.S. officials it cannot supply substantial additional vaccine until late June or July. “Last summer, Pfizer officials had urged Operation Warp Speed to purchase 200 million doses, or enough of the two-shot regimen for 100 million people, according to people knowledgeable about the issue who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the situation. But the Warp Speed officials declined, opting instead for 100 million doses. But last weekend, with an FDA clearance expected any day, federal officials reached back out to the company asking to buy another 100 million doses. By then, Pfizer said it had committed the supply elsewhere”

ADDED 11/15: Doctors Are Calling It Quits Under Stress of the Pandemic. Another horrible irony of the pandemic – as we need more doctors, we have fewer. “About 8 percent of the doctors reported closing their offices in recent months, which the foundation estimated could equal some 16,000 practices. Another 4 percent said they planned to shutter within the next year.”

ADDED 10/19: China becomes the first major economy to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic

ADDED 10/14: “Proposal to let coronavirus spread naturally through US population interests White House and alarms medical establishment.” The math surrounding that strategy is terrifying. Scientists say that herd immunity requires about 2/3 of the population to have the antibodies. That’s 220 million people. In the USA in recent months, about 1.4% of the people who get the virus do not survive it. In other words, achieving herd immunity without a vaccine will require about three million Americans to die … and that’s IF IT WORKS!

ADDED 10/8: Infections fell 75% after mask mandates and bar closures in Arizona, study shows

ADDED 9/24: What’s Behind Mainland Southeast Asia’s Surprising Success Against COVID-19?

ADDED 7/15: In a masterpiece of reasoning worthy of Descartes, Trump says the U.S. would have half the number of coronavirus cases if it did half the testing. (Of course it would have the same amount of cases today, and more tomorrow, since the undetected cases would cause spreading. It would have fewer cases reported in the short term, but that’s not much of a goal.) Even more important, fatalities and hospitalizations are also rising again. I suppose his solution to that is to close the hospitals and morgues.

ADDED 7/8: Turns out karma is real, and it can be a bitch. President Bolsonaro of Brazil Tests Positive for Coronavirus, Gee, I can’t imagine how a thing like this could happen – oh, wait (see below) …

ADDED 6/26: : It’s not a political thing, it’s a health thing. Even uber-conservative Darth Cheney wears a mask, as did his mentor, Darth Vader.

ADDED 6/26:


Or as Oliver Cromwell told his men, “Don’t bother keeping your powder dry. Just trust in God to stop their bullets.”

UPDATED 6/19: This can’t be good: “The antibodies our bodies develop against COVID-19 can fade away in just two to three months.”

ADDED 5/21: Black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at three times the rate of white people

UPDATED 5/9: In a bizarre irony, hospitals are making mass lay-offs in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The institutions are suffering financially because they have had to eliminate all the most profitable parts of their business in order to treat corona victims. In all, 1.4 million health care workers lost their jobs in April, 135,000 of those in hospitals.

ADDED 3/28: The data reveal that covid-19 is much more dangerous for men. The data are consistent from country to country.

March 9:

March 4: “A lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild. They will get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor.”

Feb 26: “We have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, even going to work. Some of them go to work, but they get better.”

Feb 26: “We’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time..”

Feb 26: “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up..”

Feb 26: “The 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

Feb 25:

Feb 24:


The Dow was at 27,960 that day. One month later it was at 18,592.

Jan 24:

Jan 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”