A Tale of two Countries: Italy & Japan

Which one are we going to be?

Disclaimer; I am not an expert on the subject of Covid-19 or Novel Coronavirus. I was investigating some data related to Covid-19 infection and pandemic for my family and I found the following information quite useful for my personal use.

Spain

Again similar plot but with the new recoveries plotted on the same space. The item I am looking at is the rate of drop of the orange curve, and the rise of the green curve.

This is the daily new cases plot for Italy until today April 07, 2020. The fact I am looking for is the start of the event to the peak. Here it is Feb 21 to March 21. That is about a month.

So why are these plots important? They are giving me a clue on how long we might be stuck inside in the US. I understand that the United States is a bigger and more diverse population, so complexity of the cases could be worse compared to Italy. Even more alarming fact; cases can increase very late. I took this clue/hint from Japan.

Japan

Japan is a very interesting case in the current pandemic. The country fared very well in the beginning, and we thought that basic careful personal hygiene of Japanese society will be enough to control the spread of Covid-19 there. However, recent data suggests that may not be the case. There is an alarming spike of recent cases in Japan lately.

Same story in the New Case vs. New Recoveries. Alarming thing is this can happen to any country. Whether the society put their guard down or not.

First case in Japan was as early as Feb 15. We thought it was perfectly under control. But we can see the recent spike in the new cases.

Which direction we will go in the US?

Obviously, we do not know, and likely there is no simple way to predict. Data suggests, that peak should be reached in about 3-4 weeks from the start of the pandemic (which should be just about now). However, it is not easy to define the start (classic example is Japan). Also it can revive/re-start. Also the width of the plateau can be wide. Spain have peaked, but the number of new cases are still not even half when compared to the highest numbers it has seen. So even after 15 days of reaching peak, the numbers are still alarmingly higher.

The way I am reading this is that we might be stuck at home all the way till summer. The economic impact of that globally could be alarming.

All charts are from this source.