When Wikipedia Leads

Of all the sources that are out there, the one that seems to be the clearest in communicating what’s happening with the Coronavirus is Wikipedia. Take three articles:

2020 coronavirus pandemic in Canada

2020 coronavirus pandemic in South Korea

2020 coronavirus pandemic in Italy

Looking at these three articles helped me better get a sense of what might be some possible scenarios here in Canada.

The Italy Scenario

In this scenario, things are bad. I can use these articles to look at where the number of confirmed cases or deaths are now here and where they were the same for Italy, and then just count the days until they hit, say, 10,000 confirmed cases or 500+ deaths. (It’s about two weeks away… April 2 or so).

I can also get a sense of whether a nationwide lockdown can have an effect. Maybe? It seems the increase in new cases is coming down.

The South Korea Scenario

This is a “good” scenario. After a week, the number of new cases drops to the single digit increase and reduces further. The main difference seems to be doing much more testing, hopefully catching the asymptomatic people who are the super spreaders.

The real champion here is Wikipedia make the way the information is presented to be consistent and seemingly more accurate than other sources.