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The WORLD

Just when things were going so well, this ...

Who needed this ?

BELGIUM - Cases

Here is a gallery of several images, to get a more complete picture of today's numbers.

But in comparing this Thursday with last, overall new cases in Belgium were less today then last week. 

Comparing recent cases with those in March and April, well there is no comparison.

The government and its experts may have noticed that, but I can't say for sure.

The number of inhabitants differs of course in Flanders, Brussels and Walloonia by region.

And what is counted as a "case" of course means a postive test for the virus.

So below, these figures inform that the number pf positive tests (or cases) in Walloonia, corrected for population differences, are 105% of those in Brussels, and 203% of those in Flanders.

Belgium today lost its lead to Czechia.

But that may be like the end of a bicycle race where those in the lead frequently change position before the final sprint.

Something like that.

But famous competitors like France, Netherlands, Spain and Italy, and the United Kingdom, are now far behind in the pack.

Hey wait a minute ...

These are not bicycles, they're sick people. Time to regain some control in reporting results.

BELGIUM - Deaths

Probably best summarized like this.

14 LOCAL CITIES

Of these 14 cities, how many decreased or stayed the same in reported total cases? None.

Here are the numbers for yesterday and today...

Overall for the 14, more than a doubling of growth rate since yesterday.

Closer to us ...

A little farther away ...

Five close neighbors ...

And for Stavelot, the last 10 days, Total Cases ...

Stavelot, 10 days, Total Cases per 1000 inhabitants ...

And today you are in luck ...

NO STATISTICS LESSON !

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Yesterday, Nov. 4, 2020 >>>>>>>>>>

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Servez-vous du traducteur ci-dessus si besoin ...

The WORLD

A diminution in those actively ill in the World.

Is this a point that we'd all like to see?

BELGIUM - Cases

This looks good ...

But it depends on where you look in Belgium.

The trend in new cases is downwards, but the Walloon region continues to lead the others in new cases each day.

This is % of new cases, divided by the % of the population inhabiting a region.

The Walloon region again leads the other two.

On a positive note today, a Wednesday, fewer cases were presented than last Wednesday. 

But by comparison with numbers of cases during the "first wave" as many here like to call it, numbers have been higher for 5 or 6 weeks.

But a new government was still attracting much attention to things much more important than cases of viral illness.

So today was still high (5 955 new cases) but lower than last Wednesday (13 571). Good.

BELGIUM - Deaths

 The Death Rate (or Case Fatality Rate, (2.67% today)) is going down, closely paralleling that value in the World (2.67%).

Nevertheless, deaths are increasing at the present time in all regions of the country. 

Once again, Wallonia leads the others in deaths announced each day.

14 LOCAL CITIES

Let's first look at Cases by Region, since the 14 cities we have been following are in the Liège Province that leads as well in incidence of new cases. (It's the fish-shaped dark green region below).

Matched to that is the highest test positivity rate in Liège Province.

When Mexico's positivity rate passed 40%, the world had a hard time believing the figure.

There just couldn't be as  much viral illness in one country as that number suggested.

These data presented graphically below suggest that the greatest number of tests for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, are being done in this province. Good. But it currently has a 48.7% test positivity rate!

That's bad.

The Trend in Cities Nearby

Is a rounding of the rate of rise at the top of this graph, beginning to appear?

5 small neighboring towns, where perhaps in the last 2 days a slowing of the increase in cases is trying to show itself.

While cases in Stavelot increased, overall for the 14 cites taken together, a very slight decrease in growth rate of cases is present. Not much change. We'll see tomorrow.

Are cases increasing, but at a slower rate? Perhaps.

Closing in on Stavelot ...

As mentioned yesterday, the "Tuesday effect" of fewer cases nationally, is also evident in Stavelot.

Nothing to do with the virus. It's due to the testing and medical practice habits.

Case numbers in Stavelot in the last 7 days ...

Any help to be had from statistical control of these data? Perhaps.

We've been applying two models to the results each day. One is exponential. The other is linear.

Exponential becomes a rocket one day. Linear just plods along. Both in Stavelot are increasing.

Without pushing too hard here with the details, the exponential model's error in prediction is increasing day after day.

The linear model's error is diminishing. Today it correctly predicted the number of cases announced.

So what?

Well one would like to have the actual results in Stavelot, not come out of the column of the exponential model above. It suggests that if things continue as they have been, everyone in town will have been infected by December 8.

So we prefer to listen to the linear model. 

Both models suggest that new cases will increase. It's just a question of differences in velocity.

Any other evidence to support the linear prediction?

Don't be afraid of the numbers below, I'll quickly explain.

These are comparisons of sequential 10 day periods of reported cases. 

In each, with the dates given, an average rate of growth is given with its standard deviation to permit comparing these mean values. It's called Student's unpaired t-test. You can forget that.

At number 1, growth rate was high in the first 10 day period and lower in the second. 

The p-value informs that these periods of growth were probably different.

Next, at number 2 ...

At Number 2, in the first period of 10 days the growth had increased even more, then diminished importantly in the following 10 days.

A p-value of 0.0071 says that a big difference existed in the rate of growth of cases in these two 10 day periods that followed each other.  

This is probably where what had actually been an exponential growth rate, now became linear. Calmer if you like, though still growing.

At green Number 3, the growth rate in the 1st 10 days has decreased from that in the other periods (at green numbers 1 & 2). The difference with the 25 Oct to 4 Nov group of 10 days is still significant (p = 0.023), but less impressive than before. These last two 10-day periods are starting to get closer together in terms of rate of increase in cases.

That supports the idea of a still ongoing transition from exponential to linear growth. Good.

But let's not get cavalier.

Here's a different approach to underlining that this is still serious business.

Stavelot is a small town. Let's compare it with a bigger town...

In England Boris Johnson, Prime Minister, decided to test everyone, all inhabitants, sick or not, in the city of Liverpool. 

Why? Because Liverpool had the highest number of cases in England last week. 

Liverpool reported over 410 weekly cases per 100 000 inhabitants. This will be the first city in England to be tested on a city-wide scale. Approxilately a half million people live in Liverpool. They were probably impressed by what the population did in Slovakia to test everyone.

So Liverpool had 4100 cases per million population, or 2050 per half-million that live there, last week.

It is one of the highest numbers in the United Kingdom.

Everyone working or living in the city will be offered tests, even if they are asymptomatic.

As Boris Johnson said: "These tests will help identify the many thousands of people in the city who don’t have symptoms but can still infect others without knowing,”

Let's play with a few numbers, and put that into perspective with Stavelot.

If one adds from one day to the next, the cases per 1000, for the past week in Stavelot, that equals a sum of 418.5 cases per 1000 inhabitants.

If one sums not the total cases, but the new cases per 1000 each day in Stavelot during the past 7 days, that's 19.25 new cases per 1000 inhabitants. That may not seem like much.

But if one extrapolates that to a population of 100 000, as reported for Liverpool, it equals 1925 cases per 100 000 inhabitants. Some may suggest that it's silly to do such a magnification, because Stavelot doesn't have 100 000 inhabitants. 

So in Liverpool, for a level of proven infection of 410 weekly cases per 100 000, mass testing is being rapidly embarked upon.

In Stavelot, for the equivalent of 1 925 weekly cases per 100 000, mass testing is not being embarked upon. For all of Belgium, 906 per 100 000 last week, and 1774,4 per 100 000 the last 2 weeks. Stavelot beats the rest of the country.

And in fact, the policy in Belgium of only testing those with symptoms is still being carefully and strictly followed. That, while people with no symptoms at all, spread the disease to others in Stavelot.

Faced with a rate of infection in Stavelot that is 4.7 times the level of infection in Liverpool, it seems that we are all calmy waiting for this problem to go away.  If the mathematical indices explained above suggest a possible calming effect of this storm, and I sincerely hope so, this is not the moment to wait and simply accept to remain locked up and inactive.

People are waiting for a vaccine with all of its remaining uncertainties of safety, effectiveness and deliverability. The newspapers never miss mentionning that volunteers in Belgium are being vaccinated to test several vaccines and see which is best. They had best hurry.

While current restrictions no longer permit going to Church and praying with others for salvation from this local crisis, it would seem that prayer may be the best solution at this time in Stavelot.

But instead of going to the Church of Saint Sebastian here in Stavelot, just stay home to intone the well known words and pray for the best.

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The WORLD

The end of the curve present a possibility of improvement. Death rate diminishing and more Recovered this day when compared with those still Actively iLL.  (2.189 recovered for each actively ill).

BELGIUM - Cases

It remains essential to place daily changes in the context of the average number of Total Cases by day of the week. 

We are Tuesday.

14 LOCAL CITIES

Does this "cases by day of week" effect pass down to individual cities?

Is this the start of a hoped for positive change?

Is it hinted at for these 5 neighboring cities ?

Let's compare two days of the week in Stavelot. Tuesdays and Fridays recently.

Here are the last 4 Tuesdays before today.

The Total Case numbers increase 2.2% from one to the next.

Here are the last 5 Fridays :

These Friadays show an average growth rate in Total Cases in Stavelot of 14.8%.

So even in Stavelot, there is a "day of week" effect.

One can also get a sense of Tuesdays bringing a plateau to growth in the graphic below.

The arrows show the Tuesdays. The Monday before is usually just a bit lower. Less change on Tuesdays.

But before we become too pessimistic, are there any positive signs? 

Yes. Here's one.

But we quickly accept that yesterday was Monday, and today is Tuesday, so maybe it's just more of that "day of week" effect.

But let's not abandon too quickly.

Unfortuantely ...

We need a few statistics to add a little clarity if not brevity.

Below, the relationships between passage of days and Total Cases that we have presented before.

On top, an exponential relationship. This is the relationship that stays quiet until it goes off like a rocket.

The relationship is still strong (R²=0.975) but it weakened just a bit in the past two days.

One also notices some points of actual values that are falling below the line.

Below this one is the linear relationship. Its correlation value, R² = 0.9886, is now slightly higher than the one for the exponential relationship.

The points are also staying closer to the line which is a good sign.

Let's let these two predict some outcomes. That looks like this:

Today is Day Number 197, or 3 November.

There were 482 Total Cases announced for Stavelot.

The exponential relationship predicted 562. That's a 17% error.

The linear realtionship predicted 479. That's two cases below actual. That's less than a 1% error.

The large green number 1 shows that the error has recently been smaller for the linear than for the exponential relationship (green number 2).

The linear relationship is certainly the rate of growth in cases that we would prefer if we had to chose between the two.

Just a little more ...

A comparison of two periods of 10 days of growth in these total positive tests for infection.

These two groups of ten are actually only 1 day apart if you look closely.

But maybe there's actually no difference in these pairs of average numbers?

That is called the null hypothesis. 

Without belaboring the point, that hypothesis of no difference does not seem to be a correct conclusion.

In fact even more than when calculated yesterday, the last 10 days have a smaller average rate of growth in cases (4.96%) than the previous 10 days (9.97%). 

What is the chance that there actually is no difference in growth? Yesterday in was 57 chances out of 1000. Today, it's 7 chances out of 1000 that what looks like an improvement is not one at all, but just a coincidence. 

If there were 993 chances out of 1000 that I would win my bet, I might quickly place a few €uros on the table. Certainly 5 or 10 €uros if i had them in my pocket.

So when one looks at the graph below and sees that in Stavelot, with only 1 case more since yesterday, perhaps we've reached the peak, do not lose that hope of good things to come.

But it still remains wise to prepare for the possibility of the opposite result as well.

It's much too early of course to explain any positive change in the last few days, by the recent increase in limits imposed by the government. They just started officially yesterday.

But we should take this opportunity to remind that success will only come through a combined effect of  personal and shared responsibilities. There are holes in the cheese, but they rarely go all the way through. It's not about doing one or two things that are required. It's about doing all the things that we can, and that can make a difference. 

And unfortuantely, we saw that little vacations from caution over a weekend, just won't help today's suggested improvement to prove itself as real in the days to come.

An attitude of just getting by, tolerating a few cases here and there, while awaiting the arrival of the vaccine, ... Well, that just didn't work. 

Test asymptomaic citizens. Quarantine the positives (but not where they can infect family members). Close the borders of Stavelot to all potential cases being delivered here from elsewhere. Then real progress towards safety can be made.

And control of rising case numbers doesn't have to wait until a vaccine appears.

Look at all the trouble most people (or their neighbors) are having to obtain the influenza vaccine. Something that has been an ongoing process available for years, has now become a complicated mystery for the 35 to 40% of the population who get it each year.

Do not behave as though a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 will be available any time soon.

Do everything that you can to protect the nice town where you live.

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Servez-vous du traducteur ci-dessus si l'anglais ne vous convient pas. 

Q: When a little guy needs help from a big guy, what should the little guy do?

Ans. : Ask for it.

Macedonia asked NATO for some help.

NATO replied, said yes, and took action. 

Macedonia now has ventilators that it needed and did not have.

Thank you NATO.

Does Stavelot need ventilators today? Perhaps not.

Will Stavelot need vantilators in the near future? No one knows.

If not ventilators, think of the other things that Stavelot already needs to counter the rising Total Cases each day. 

Find the right contacts. Here they are: @NATO and @NATOPress).

Then make up your list.

Send it to NATO.

Then, prepare mentally to receive.

Prepare physically to receive what you have asked for.

If you don't know how, ask how to receive. It's not a handout. It's called Humanitarian Aid.

Don't want to try to live through this pandemic all alone?  Then begin to see yourself as an essential part of the world that must be saved. See Stavelot as essential to the World.

The World will respond.

26 October : Know when to go fast >>>>>>>>>>

29 October : From Ideas to ACTIONS >>>>>>>>>

30 October : From Idea to MORE ACTION >>>>>>

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