New Figures Show Countries Are Turning the Corner on Coronavirus, But Democrats Need Us ScaredAt first, the media’s concern was warranted. An exotic virus pops up in China and begins spreading quickly. Then it turns out to be deadly (never mind that it’s deadly in the vast
minority of cases and those are overwhelmingly contained within the age 70+ demographic). Then it goes international. Then the media chatter starts to spook markets that depend on China. Then market corrections start. That’s the stuff of a media feeding frenzy, and feed the media has.
Stories abound about new cases, new borders crossed and new famous and/or powerful people quarantining themselves.
Those stories, however, don’t really get at the root question we need to ask at this point in the drama.
The question we should be asking is whether or not the daily number of new cases is increasing inside different countries.
Until the virus is eradicated entirely, new cases will continue to pop up. That’s definitionally true. And as long as there are new cases and enough people traveling internationally, the virus will cross borders.
These shouldn’t be novel concepts, though the media continues to treat them as new apostolic revelations.
What’s far more helpful than the plain number of new cases is the number of new cases compared to the previous day. If daily new cases increase over time, then the contagion hasn’t peaked and more concern is warranted.
If, however, the number of daily new cases begins to decrease over time, it’s likely a critical milestone has been hit and the virus is on its way to being controlled if not eradicated (for all intents and purposes).
If new cases consistently decrease day after day, the eventual elimination of the virus is inevitable — eventually, the new case count hits zero and stays there.
(Of course, someone’s always going to have a pesky strain of the flu or common cold — but as far as the survival of humanity goes, the new case count will be essentially zero.)
Take China for example.
New cases reported peaked on Feb. 12, but since that was due largely in part to a reporting hiccup, let’s take the next day as our peak. Feb. 13 saw
5,090 reported new cases of coronavirus in China.
Though small upticks were reported every few days, daily decreases in new cases soon followed, leading to just
327 new cases reported two weeks later on Feb. 27. On March 6, the last day data was reported, there were only
99 new cases.
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