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9/2/2020 0 Comments

Ending toward the end of 2020, close to 40K estimated
After the first case reported in the United States on January 20, 2020, more than seven months of struggling time has been gone. After the Black Death arrived in Europe in October 1347, perhaps COVID-19 is the most dreadful disease in its fast spread and noticeable fatality. Hawaii has arrived at the current stage of unpredictable growth and fluctuation.

It is a matter of time that the HI state and the Honolulu county would have the total number of cumulative confirmed cases more than 10,000 in one and two weeks. Most of the countries having more than 10,000 cumulative confirmed cases never experiences any noticeable slowdown or stopping trends. It is very reasonable to expect that the state of Hawaii will experience continuous increases in infected cases. Simultaneously, the accuracy of specific statistical data is not critically important; instead, we need to know where we are going unless we can stop the unprecedented level of pandemic spread in the state of Hawaii.

The HI statewide CCC already exceeded 8,000 with the total death of 62, i.e., the fatality is about 0.08%. The HI state already entered a mature pandemic state, where the daily new cases and new deaths are pseudo-constant. Usually, reaching from 10K to 20K is faster than from 0 to 10K. Honolulu county will have 20K (2% of Oahu population) by early October, probably yielding 160 deaths. In the worst future scenario, assuming the CCC growth rate will be pseudo-linear for long, the Honolulu county will have 7,500 - 10,000 new cases every month. Honolulu CCC is 7,410 (close to 7.5K), which will be monthly new cases for long. Therefore, forecasting is 15K by September, 22.5K by October, 30 K by November, and 37.5 by Christmas. A rough estimation of Honolulu CCC by the end of 2020 is close to 40K, i.e., 4 % of the Oahu population.

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9/2/2020 0 Comments

[08/28/2020 Fri] the future is dark.

The first week of the fall instruction at UHM ended today. Passing yesterday to today, Honolulu's cumulative confirmed cases exceeded 7,000: we forecasted 8/23 the date when Honolulu CCC will be close to 7,000. As we emphasized in the past weeks, Honolulu CCC increases monotonously for more than two weeks. Every day the number of new cases is approximately the same. The previous research for the pandemic spread in G20 countries indicates that if a country's CCC exceeded 100, it did not stop until it reached 100,000. Even if the CCC's semi-log versus time plot shows a seeming plateau profile, daily new confirmed cases did not stop. We cannot go back to the previous CCC stage below 1,000 until late May 2020. But, we also cannot stop the future spread of coronavirus in the state of Oahu. Even if the Honolulu CCC growth rate somehow slowed down from exponential to linear, this trend change should not be misunderstood that the Honolulu situation became better. The conservative model of the hyperbolic tangent function gave us reliable prediction, but now it gives us nothing but lower bound of the CCC projected to the near future. The effects of restriction and lock-down usually came out in a few weeks. If so, the linear growth of the Honolulu CCC will continue about a month. We forecasted that Honolulu CCC would exceed 10,000 by 8/31 (on 8/15). No matter what our previous prediction is relatively close or not, if the current trend continues, then the HI CCC and Honolulu CCC will be more than 10,000 on September 3 and 10, respectively. Note that 10,000 is more than 1.0% of Oahu populations. And, there is no country in the world where the daily new cases entirely stop after the total CCC exceeds 10,000.

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9/2/2020 0 Comments

Today (8/25) is the second day of the fall 2020 semester. Fortunately, any violent increase in the Honolulu CCC did not happen, but instead, the CCC time-series become abnormally linear. In the last seven days, the daily new cases reported are on the average 215 with a standard deviation of 34.
On 8/15, when the Honolulu CCC widely increased, we forecast that the number will reach 7,000 by 8/23 and 10,000 by 8/31. Today, the state CCC reached 6,984, and the Honolulu portion is more than 91% percent of the state CCC.
From 5/14 to 5/27, Honolulu had zero new cases, maintaining the CCC equal to 414. Now, we have 15 times more total confirmed cases. The 7-day moving average method is often used to smooth the fluctuating data series. No mathematical function can perfectly fit the past data and accurately predict the future. In my opinion, the pandemic trend of COVID-19 is away from both the capability of analytic models and data-driven predictions.
Will Honolulu CCC mimic the same peak trend of 4/27 and start global slowdown, or make another jump after a few weeks of a less active period?

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8/24/2020 0 Comments

Honolulu CCC Analysis

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8/23/2020 0 Comments

Honolulu CCC Analysis

Given the state order was made 2 weeks ago closing public parks and loitering on beaches, we will start to see its effects on the CCC of Honolulu county as it should decrease.
On 8/15, we forecasted that Honolulu CCC would reach close to 7,000 by today, and we now have 6, 031. A primary reason for the difference is that our forecasting was done when the Honolulu CCC was increasing the most rapid rate ever. During the last two weeks, three independent models did not show the same trend. Instead, the HICOVID model and the semi-log linear model alternatively be on top of each other.
Now, the Honolulu CCC seems to increase linearly, having almost the same number of new cases per day, which is between 200 and 250.
Three models show that the Honolulu CCC may reach around 8,000, which seems to be a reasonable estimation. The recent restriction can reduce the pandemic spread, but opening schools may impact it oppositely.
What we should understand is not the fact that the Honolulu daily cases or its rate are decreasing, but the Honolulu CCC was 659 on 7/1; today (8/23), it is 6031. Approximately we have ten times more cases than two months ago.

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8/22/2020 0 Comments

Is this decline a real decline?

Honolulu and Maui's weekly trends, from 8/16 Sunday to 8/22 Saturday, show a unique, linear pattern that rarely happened in the past month (except Maui CCC on 8/19 Wednesday). As a result, the semi-log linear regression is below the HICOVID model.
If we follow the 7-day linear regression trend shown below, one can expect that Honolulu CCC would reach a little over 6,000 by 8/23/2020. In this stage, all the extrapolating models of linear and semi-log linear regression, and the HICOVID models show similar trends within a narrow range. The hyperbolic tangent model still significantly underestimates the forecasting values in comparison to the other three models. The Honolulu CCC is still in a growing phase, influenced by the previous causes, which have not been fully identified.
What about next week and next month? The weekly increaseof Honolulu CCC show how many new cases are reported this week (0), two weeks ago (-2), and so forth. Honolulu has 1,416 new cases in this week from 8/16 Sunday to 8/22 Saturday (today). In the last week, the number is 1,426. In the semi-log plot (in red), the difference of 10 is not noticeable; but the linear plot (blue) shows a small decrease. It would be terrific if the Honolulu CCC would decrease in the opposite manner of its growth in the past weeks: for example, next week, it drops to the level of 8/8. Comparing this week and the last week, we have ten less in new cases: and comparing the last week and the week before the last week, we had 1, 426-1,122 = 304 more cases. Therefore, one can interpret that the Honolulu CCC starts increasing slowly by having lesser daily new cases in the following weeks.
On the other hand, the semi-log plot (in red, on the left-hand side) gives us a possibly opposite conclusion. There were two instances when the weekly new case number decreased, i.e., weeks of indices -8 and -5, indicating 8 and 5 weeks ago from now. A week later, in each case, the Honolulu CCC increase much more than the previous weeks. There is a high probability that the Honolulu CCC will rise again, which we hope not to. It is tough to forecast next week's increase in the Honolulu new cases. It is also possible that the re-rising would not be so severe, because the weekly data of this and the last week are very similar.
It is too early to conclude that the Honolulu situation becomes better by analyzing the two-week data until now. If you look at the red semi-log plot, it does not show that the Honolulu CCC has stopped increasing exponentially in the last ten weeks. UH instruction will be almost 100% online, which fundamentally prevents social interaction. K-12 schools should also pay close attention if any in-person instructions are planned. The recent restriction announcement is very timely, but at the individual level, staying home as much as possible without interacting with anybody except people living together is the best and only option, and it should be systematically done without too many exceptions.
Students' view:
1. The CCC data for the Honolulu county seems to be following the 7-day semi-log linear regression rather than the prediction curve 1st, 2nd, and 3rd curve as if it was following the orange curve the daily CCC would be starting to plateau today.
2. The slope of Honolulu's weekly trend graphs linearly increases with a constant slope except for a minor dip in the line on Tuesday.
3. While the number of cases between Saturdays is staying constant for Honolulu (about 1,400 cases), the number of cases between weeks on Saturdays for Maui has significantly been fluctuating. From 8/15 - 8/22, there was an increase of about 70 cases. We observe that Maui also is entering a new spreading phase. More analysis comes.