I’ve been looking at New York’s data for COVID-19 cases and deaths. I wanted to see how much this pandemic has grown per day, and at what scale. Fortunately The New York Times has shared up-to-date COVID-19 data from US states and counties for free here. My goal with the following post is to explore the New York state COVID-19 data in order to better understand the outbreak’s scale moving forward. I’m hopeful that by examining what is happening elsewhere, we can recognize the importance of doing our part to stop the spread and flatten the curve where we live.

The data from New York may be the most important important data for Americans to monitor as the pandemic strengthens its grip on the United States. Why? For a few reasons.

The scale of the outbreak in New York is enormous. 115,000 people already have the virus, and many people have already died from it. This large sample of grim data may already be providing information on how well the virus will perform when facing a blitzed American healthcare system. Remember, the healthcare system in New York was one of the country’s best heading into this. There is more bad news to come, unfortunately, but t heir experiences might already provide insight on how other states will fare when the virus encroaches on their turf.

Not only have a large number of their population already been infected, but their state and local communities are weeks into drastic actions taken to stop the spread and flatten the curve. As a result, it seems logical that their curve for new cases will flatten sooner than the rest of the country, most likely by a few weeks. This will give our entire country some idea of what their state’s numbers should, or should not, look like as they progress through this crisis, as well as a realistic timeline for the “light at the end of the tunnel.”

Third is data integrity. When receiving numbers regarding COVID from around the globe, there have been serious questions about much of the data’s accuracy. Additionally, some of the “good” data we have is from countries totally different than ours. While there are still large issues with New York’s data, it may be the most effective place to start for Americans trying to make sense of the chaos.

Finally, New York may get it worse than any other state. Their crisis has loomed large across the country. As a result of their suffering, many states and communities have taken preventative actions to stop the spread before they followed in New York’s footsteps. And again, when using their data as a guide, I’m hopeful I’ll all states will be doing better than New York when comparing their cases and deaths at the same point in the outbreak timeline.

New York, New Reality

To begin, I charted the growth of confirmed cases and confirmed death totals over the period of New York’s COVID outbreak.

(INTERACTIVE GRAPH)

We can see that the first confirmed case in New York happened on March 1st. By March 8th, there were 108 confirmed cases. A week after that, on March 15th, there were 732 cases and 6 deaths. One week later, March 22nd, the confirmed cases grew to 15,168 and the number of deaths to 122.

The alarming number of cases and deaths continues to trend up. This is largely the same bad news we’re all aware of, but as you can see, only two weeks after alarmingly arriving at over 15,000 cases, New York currently sits at nearly 115,000 cases and over 3,500 deaths! And this is with the state taking major precautions to stop the spread.

Let’s look at the number of new cases per day in relation to the state’s total number of cases.

(INTERACTIVE GRAPH)

What sticks out to me here is that the number of confirmed cases is still trending up. Since March 24th, no day has seen fewer than 5,000 new confirmed cases. Most recently, April 4th saw over 12,000 new confirmed cases. Again, these gains are happening even with the state taking major precautions and the whole world fully aware of the virus.

Here is the daily percentage-growth gains made by the virus since the outbreak.

(INTERACTIVE GRAPH)

New York saw its largest surge in cases around March 18th, 19th, and 20th, when the number of confirmed cases was growing by over 40% each day. In recent days, the percentage growth of confirmed cases has slowed to around 10% or less since April 1st.

Don’t let these percentages fool you. As we’ve seen, we are measuring percentage growth against a large, still growing number of confirmed cases. A percentage gain of 10% is still extremely dangerous when it means we’re starting with 115,000 and adding 11,500 more cases to that number in one day, then adding 12,650 to 126,500 the next. If the growth rate continues at its current level for even one more week, New York would top 200,000 confirmed cases.

I will continue to watch the trend of confirmed new cases, as this seems to be the first place the virus’s plateau will be visible. Monitoring the percentage growth will also be important as it might be more indicative of the larger curve leveling off. Hopefully soon it will reach a growth percentage of zero. As of now, New York has still not yet gotten close to that point.

The Dark Side

As for deaths and mortality rate, the full scale of this virus’ impact has yet to become fully clear. Here is how the total deaths have grown since the initial outbreak, as well as how many people have died per day due to COVID:

(INTERACTIVE GRAPH)

The “best” day in the past week for New York was April 3rd, when they saw “only” 282 people lose their lives. This was a 9.6% increase in total victims. Every other day this week has been worse, with New York seeing the number of total dead grow by 17% or more. April 2nd, for example, saw 712 people lose their lives.

Thus far in the crisis, New York’s mortality rate has climbed to roughly 3%.

(INTERACTIVE GRAPH)

I arrived at the 3% Mortality Rate by dividing the number of deceased by the number of confirmed cases, and am aware that not all infected have been “confirmed”. This 3% mortality rate still sits under the worldwide rate of ~5%. I arrived at this number by dividing the world total of deceased–67,507–by the total number of infected–1.2 million.

I am hopeful that the distance between those two rates is a result of effective healthcare provided to patients in New York, but fear it may be more due to the more recent time of outbreak. If New York were at a 5% mortality rate, there would already be roughly 1,200 more deaths. Unfortunately, as you can see, the rate is still headed upwards, and we might hit 4 or 5% before long.

Life Ahead in 2020 P.C.

Leaders have braced the nation with news that these next weeks will be our most painful. When seeing how quickly the numbers of cases and deaths have grown in New York, and how large the scale of human life losses are, it’s easy to understand why.

As of April 4th, The New York Times reported 3,568 deaths. At the current percentage growth of confirmed cases, and with a mortality rate of 3%, New York could see their total number of dead rise to 8,400 in a week . If mortality reaches 4%, that number could rise to around 11,000 dead.

I’ll be returning to New York’s data to monitor their figures. I’ll also be looking at other states and comparing their trajectories to New York’s. Oregon, for example, looks to be one of the states whose quick response managed to stop the spread, even despite being sandwiched between two COVID hotbeds in California and Washington.

Meanwhile, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Georgia all states who’ve taken minimal action, and have done so much later than New York. Louisiana, in particular, looks to be extremely problematic. I will investigate their cases and outbreak timeline, and report back on how those state’s futures might compare to New York’s devastating present.

Whatever happens, this crisis has illustrated how tightly connected our world is. We are all in this together. The virus does not care what we think of it, but only how available we make ourselves to it. At times I’ve not respected the virus. I feel that even now I’m still coming to fully appreciate and recognize its power. It’s embarrassing to admit considering how it has already humbled our world on so many levels, but we are all human and this is almost bigger than many of us can fathom.

I hope reading through this has given you some helpful perspective on what’s happening, even if it is somewhat unsettling. Until next time take care, stay safe, and wear your mask.