CORONA - AN INTRODUCTION
by Ditty April 2020
Introduction - What is going on
Since the Corona / COVID19 outbreak last December 2019 that started in Wuhan, China - a lot has been written about the phenomenon. On the 11th of March 2020 it was confirmed as pandemic by World Health Organization. According to Johns Hopkins University 184 countries (at the time of writing) have been affected by the virus and have registered cases of COVID19.
Objective & Limitations - Keep it small gradually increase knowledge
Based on the large amount of data and information (news, blogs, socials or official government documents) that citizens are confronted with - I sometimes found it difficult to distinguish facts from opinions. Hence, I found myself analysing the Corona outbreak on a daily basis. Where I would try to fact-check statements of experts or politicians that I heard the day before on popular late night talk shows in the Netherlands. Like
Jinek
or
Op1. All in order to try and make sense of the virus and the outbreak.
From a statistical and data science perspective pandemics are interesting subjects to study, as they cover a lot of key statistical concepts that we use in data science. Eg distribution theories, significance levels, exponential growth etc. My objective in this series of posts is to try and balance a simplification of what is going on while also keeping it understandable for audiences that are less data-literate. Implying that it is preferable to keep research questions small and by answering the individual questions per post - we are gradually building knowledge about the virus and it's outbreak and at the same time are aiming to help readers become more data-literate.
Research Question - what to better understand
For this series of posts I will be zooming in on the following research questions / topics:
- Introduction - what to study (this post)
- How did the pandemic spread across China over time? (second post)
- How do mortality rates look during the first fourteen days in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands (third post)
- Are mortality rates different across Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain? (fourth post)
- How does the infection rate look across states in The Netherlands (fifth post)
Concluding remarks - not an epidemiologists
Please note that I am not an epidemiologists and thus wary of relating the outcomes of my endevours to the current situation. My aim is to create a better understanding about the visrus and it's outbreak and hopefully help people (and myself) to place presented information in a more statistical perspective.
Hope you enjoy reading!
All the best,
Ditty
