Final Report: The Italian Recovery Roars Ahead

May 25 2020 — Rem COVID-19 Report #45 (Volume 2 Number 3)

Please note – I’m wrapping up my regular reporting, with this US Memorial Day report. Yes, it’s possible I may launch a Volume 3 on an intermittent basis, but for now, I have the answers I was looking for. Thank you everybody for reading and your constructive and thoughtful commentary along the way, especially Ms. Sabrina Johnson!

Globally, more improvement, week over week. Simple CrossOver improved from 57% to 65% this past week, applying simple daily averages. Acid CrossOver was up from 52% to 60%, applying the same averages week over week. Average daily new cases increased about 10%, from 87.3K, to 96.5K. However, that was outstripped by growth in recoveries, which increased from 45.4K per day, to nearly 60K. Deaths declined slightly, from 4.6K to 4.3K per day.

The US picture deteriorated. Weekly averages were decidedly worse, as Simple CrossOver declined from 54% to 45%, while Acid CrossOver decreased from 48% to 40%. Average daily new cases were up slightly, from 21.9K to 22.9K. Recoveries declined from 10.2K to 9.0K, driving the metrics down, even though deaths declined from 1.4K to 1.1K per day as well.  Open cases have continued to grow throughout the event, now at 1.225MM.

The Italian recovery roars ahead. Almost every daily measure of Italian CrossOver, whether for a given day, or moving averages, exceeds not only 200%, but now over 300%. New daily cases dropped from just under 1,000, to 652. Recoveries are running at 2.3K per day, though down from 2.8K per day the prior week. Daily deaths are down to 150, from a peak value approaching 1,000. Open cases have declined from a high of 108K on April 20, now down to just 58K. Easily the best performance of the 4 main data sets I’ve observed over the past 10+ weeks.

The Spain data moved ahead – we think. Again, there’s been a lot of choppiness in reporting, including mid-week reductions in cumulative counts, which get “corrected” or “updated” later in the week. Applying some crude interpolations, and again using moving weighted averages week over week: Simple CrossOver improved from 85% to 118%, and Acid CrossOver also improved from 79% to 106%. Average Open Cases declined from 102.6K to 100.9K.

I measure 2 things, on a color-coded scale between 0% and 200+%, the convenient StopLight format (red — yellow — green):

1.   Simple CrossOver. How do total resolutions for a given day (recoveries + deaths) compare to new cases? Or thought of another way — what’s going on with Net Cases, which suggests consumption of hospital and medical resources. At 100% or greater, net outstanding cases are declining, as was the case in China in mid March, and now finally we’re seeing in Spain and Italy, but no so much the United States, YET, here at the end of April.

2.  Acid Test CrossOver. This poses an even stricter burden, comparing only recoveries versus new cases. This gets more to the heart of — are we winning the battle? And to my understanding, of the original metric — when recoveries start exceeding new cases, we are winning the war.

By the way, the term “Acid Test” is inspired by the Acid Test ratio we learn as accountants, which is a stricter measure of Cash availability to pay bills.

David L. Remington

May 25, 2020