Updated 21st of march 2020

Following the development of the current COVID-19 pandemic the graph below shows how the numbers of infected people might rise over the comming months.

There are roughly 7,8 billion people on this world. According to this article in the Los Angeles Times (based on this paper), even people with mild or no symptoms can spread the virus. To produce the graph I had to make a number of more or less vague assumtions:

• I assume that everybody will get infected or at least be exopesed to the virus at some point.
• 96% (or 7,5 billion) will experience mild symptoms or none at all,
• 3,5% (or 275 million) will become seriously ill, (be so ill that they need help from someone, professional or otherwise),
• 0,5% (or 40 million) will die.
• Governmental measures to slow down the spreading will have a maximum effect of 75% about the mid of may.

I will refine these assumptions over time as more and more reliable statistics come in.

Spread prediction

Unless the world truely manages to contain and eradicate the virus, today (march 21) it looks as if we can expect this development:

• What we have experienced so far in not even visible on the graph (no visible elevation of the curve on the far left, today).
• Even in countries hit hard, like Italy, not even a tenth of a percentage is infected so far, giving us an idea of what might come.
• Around mid of april the virus will spread rapidly as more and more people will carry the infection, showing symtoms or not.
• In the beginning of may a maximum of people will be infected.
• And by the end of june most people will have recovered or died.

The seriously ill

The following graph shows only the seriously ill and those that will die:

Overwhelming the health care system

As we can see, the maximum number of seriosly ill people will peak at about 250 mio worldwide.

There are many ways countries and individuals can influence the final shape of the curve, but until today all maesures taken (outside China) appear to have slowed the spread of the infection by only 0,4%.

No health care system anywhere will be able to cope. Instead, it is high time that governments publish their own (probably more accurate numbers), face the facts and start to prepare and educate their people in how to care for themeselves and others when they lay sick at home and how medical help can be organized outside the established health care systems. Also food rations may need to be distributed in time.

What it may mean for you

If you want to calculate the estimated peak of the seriously ill in your own country divide your country’s population by 7,8 billion and multiply that number with 250 million (max number of seriously ill).

Estimated peaks of seriously ill in some example countries:

• USA: 320 mio / 7800 mio * 250 mio = 10 mio.
• Germany: 83 mio / 7800 mio * 250 mio = 2,7 mio.
• Sweden: 11 mio / 7800 mio * 250 mio = 0,35 mio or 350 thous.

The timing of the peak may differ some weeks in your country depending on how rapidly the virus is spread and how many cases there are now.

China

China is in this context a wildcard. China succeeded to contain the virus. Only 80 thousand out of 1,3 billion where infected. However outstandning the result, the Chineese population has no imunitiy and either China has to isolate itself from the rest of the world untill there is a working vaccine or in a controlled way let the virus spread again.
Isolation would probaly prove economically desasterous as countries recovering from both COVID-19 and their broken economy will gladly take over marked shares left untouched by China.

Flattening the curve

An alternativ development to the curves above (and one many governments attempt to achive) would be to slow the spread to such a degree that serious ill persons will have access to profesional health care at all times. Given the very limited number of hospital beds and staff even in rich countries the duration of a country lockdown would be many month, even years.
In Sweden for instance there is a population of 11 mio and about 500 – 1000 intensive care places.
If 3,5% of all people become seriously ill, there must be at no time more that 1000 / 0,035 = 30000 infected. 11 mio divided by 30000 = 350. If it takes a 14 days period to recover it will take about 350 * 14 = 4900 days or 13 years to funnel the entire population of Sweden through the crisis. By then, everybody will have starved, gone mad or broken out of isolation. This is not a realistic alternative.

Even if we try to flatten the curve to this degree untill there is a working vaccine, a lockdown of a country or the entire world for 12 – 24 month is not possible. Not only for economic reasons but also because there are to many elements that operate outside government controll like the illigal sex and drug industry and their cusotmers, various kinds of corruption within governmental organizations, organised crime, rougue and rebellious groups, slavery, homeless and poor people that survive on a day to day basis and have neither resources, power, will nor means to isolate themselves.

How the calculations are done:

I have tracked the progresion of the virus since feb 26th. Calculating the increase from day to day reveals that not only that the number of cases increases in a exponetial fashion, but that also the increase rate has increased from about 2 % by the end of februari to 12,5% on march 20th. The curve below shows that increase, where the jagged part of the curve comes from the real life data and the smooth part is my projection, assuming that the acceleration will continue untill almost everybody is or has been infected.

Using that ever increasing increment I project forward how many new cases there will be each day.

Governmental counter measures

I assume that governments will implement ever more desperate measures to slow down the spreading. Until now we can hardly see any effect of the measures taken in Italy, Spain and other countries. Taking the so far predicted increment for each day, I compare the real value of new cases with predicted new cases and adjust the difference by rising the value of counter measure effects. Until now I can only detect an effect of 0,4%. However, I assume it will start to show over the coming days. I assume these measures will have an effect of 2% by april 1st, 10% by april 10th, 20% by april 25th, then raising gradually to 75% by mid may.

Limits of these calculations

I have to stress that these are mere assumptions. But there are limits for how soon a goverment can start to incarcerate their people when there are only a few confirmed cases, so most goverments will tend to wait much to long. As a result in most countries the effect of these measures will be too weak and too late. And as said before, many sectors of society are outside government control. People from those sectors will try to circumvent restrictions rather than face starvation.

Also, some countries like Sweden, not test their population anymore. Instead they only test and report on specific groups. The true number of infected people is in all countries probably much higher, which in turn may mean that the share of those that risk to become seriouly ill or die might be much lower.

Concerns, hopes and thanks

However, at this point and facing that development I can only repeat my previous concern:

It is high time that governments publish their own (probably more accurate numbers), face the facts and start to educate their people in how to care for themeselves and others when they lay sick at home and how medical help can be organized outside the established health care systems.

I hope and wish that we as a global humanity, facing the coming crisis, will look out for those in need regardless any differences, perceived or real, and emerge more aware of how vulnerable but also how capable we are. That we take this crisis as a lessen of how urgendly we need to tackle even other challenges we are facing if we want to secure our place on this planet and give every human a fair chance for a happy life.

I will try to update these calculations every few days and can only encourage people to try to work out similar predictions on their own and with respect to their own countries in order to be optimal prepared.

I want to whole-heartedly thank the Worldometer homepage from where I get the daily updates, neccessary for my calculations. I hope you continue you amazing work and get the funding you need!