This update was authored by Douglas Decicco of TranSeed Research, Lighthouse Point, Florida, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Several media presentations have hypothesized that China and North Korea have controlled the spread of COVID-19 through only through insidious approaches, that existing data may not conclusively be indicating exponential growth, and that higher than published mortality rates are suspect, we should consider information theory.
To perform information analysis correctly, all data must be suspect. Even after the data is corroborated or found to be legitimate through other data science means, all conclusions drawn from data must also be scrutinized. Although a model of Hubei case metrics can be a good model for other countries, the parameters guiding when the shift from exponential growth to attenuated growth cannot be applied to countries that value individual rights, because the political approach and cultural conventions regarding government and disease control differ in what some consider draconian societies.
The free societies whose countries were first infected have already passed the point when Hubei began to attenuate toward an R∅ of 1.0, so the fact that these societies continue to experience exponential growth is significant. Whether China and North Korea physically trap citizens in their homes to wait and die or whether they design a draconian propaganda scheme to control the scientifically unsophisticated population by setting real or fictitious examples is of ethical and humanitarian concern, but is not relevant for the modelling of the disease transmission and impact on people. It is clear that those societies not willing to exercise more extreme preventative measures, which free societies may consider draconian, the trajectories in free countries all following nearly identical exponential trajectories with limited effectiveness of preventative recommendations in public notices. If the trajectory of the spread of COVID-19 in Italy begins to deviate from exponential growth, similar improvements to the outcomes of prevention appear in Spain, then the deviation threshold can be analyzed and used to project trajectory changes for France, the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, and other countries. From there, the total number of deaths and recoveries can be projected for those countries with reliability and accuracy worthy of news.
We continue to recommend additional prevention and monitor the trajectories by country.