The Homa Files

Last night, when the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Map was flashed on the screen, something caught my eye.

The red dots visualize the prevalence of COVID-19 in each geographic area.

Take a look… what do you see?

Let’s zoom in….

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What’s the big yellow circled area with a relatively small red dot?

According to the JHU researchers, Russia has only 93 confirmed cases … and zero deaths.

What’s going on in Russia?

According to Radio Free Europe’s recap, nothing special.

In fact, it’s just this week that Russia implemented strict travel entry bans, restrictions of large group gatherings and isolation of vulnerable people.

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What else might explain the apparent low incidence rate?

Couple of possibilities come to mind:

• Russians may have the Holy Grail re: inhibiting COVID-19 spread
• The Russian gov’t may be intentionally under reporting cases and fatalities.
• Though stricter inbound travel restrictions are new, Russia’s borders are pretty much sealed.
• Low population density is, in effect, social distancing.
• Colder weather may be an inhibitor (though temps in Russia seem comparable to the U.S. these days)

What do you think?

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This entry was posted on March 17, 2020 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Coronavirus - Covid 19. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.