correlation discovered from corona virus updates

We know that warmer climates do not help much with the spread of the corona virus, but might it help with recovery of people that have already become sick? Upon looking through the corona virus update numbers for the deaths and recoveries of each of the countries a couple of weeks back, I noticed that many of the warmer climate countries seemed to be doing much better than many of the countries with colder climates. So I started looking up the average temperatures for march of each of the countries by typing "march weather *country*" into bing search engine which quickly gives the average march temperatures for the capital city of that country at the top of the list of results. I then grouped the countries together that lie within the same temperature range and added the total number of deaths together for each range and the total number of recoveries together for each range.

To find the average number of deaths to the total number of outcomes so far, I simply used the equation: deaths / (deaths plus recoveries). It should be noted, however, that while deaths may be added to the updates immediately, the recoveries may lag behind another week to be sure of a full recovery, so the ratio of deaths to total outcomes will appear greater than they actually are due to the lag of recoveries. With this in mind, a quick blind averaging of all of the countries at that time worked out to 40% deaths to total outcomes at temperatures below 70 degrees F, 17% at 70-80 degrees F, and fell to just 11% over 80 degrees F. That is a very large difference of about three to four times lesser death rate at higher temperatures. I would like to implore others to work through the new numbers from the updates and verify these results as well as the data is readily available.

I spent the last week trying to determine which countries have the best health care as that may also be a very large factor as well and indeed, many of the countries that are doing well according to the recovery rates in the updates are at the top of the list for health care as well. However, roughly half of the countries that are listed as having top health care are not doing well at all in the updates, mostly the colder countries, unless those countries are simply waiting longer before listing their recoveries in order to ensure that their patients have had a full and successful recovery, perhaps with up to a two or three week lag if that is the case.

I wasn't sure whether to take the countries with better health care off the list altogether, since many of them are doing very well, having some of the best ratios of all of the countries in the updates so far, but many of them are doing very poorly also, so I decided to leave them for now and just truncate the results within each range of temperatures. Using this last friday's updates, I originally divided the countries up into 6 temperature ranges so that each includes about 14 countries. Since some countries have large numbers and some small, I ran the ratios for each country with greater than 10 outcomes individually this time and added 1 to the number of deaths and 10 to the number of recoveries so that countries with an unreliably small number of outcomes might be placed closer to the expect results while barely affecting countries with a larger number of outcomes, so the equation for the new results becomes (deaths + 1) / (deaths + recoveries + 11).

I then truncated the two countries that are doing the best and the two countries that are doing the worst within each temperature range which would hopefully drop most countries that are doing well due to health care, and then I found the mean average of the countries that remain within each range by simply adding their individual ratios together and dividing by the number of countries. Originally I had 6 ranges, but one of them was rather large, ranging from the 60's to mid 70's and there appears to be a sudden drop within that range and I wanted to better see where that drop occurs, so I broke that range up into two smaller ranges and only trancated one country from the top and bottom each for those two ranges.

Many countries are only now becoming ill and one would need to wait til there are more outcomes to get the most accurate results, but by then thousands of people will have died and this may help so I want to go ahead and get it out there. My thinking is that most people stay indoors after becoming ill where the climate is controlled. However, if the climate outside is colder, then in order to save on energy bills, most people would probably keep the inside of their house cooler as well, perhaps as low as 60 degress F, while those with decent climates at the moment would tend to keep their house about the same, and those with hot climates might tend to keep their house at a warm temperature from 75 to 80 degrees F perhaps. So the results for the temperature differences could be as little as a 20 degree difference, those below "room temperature" and those above.

Since heat does not affect the spread of the virus, then heat most likely doesn't kill it, but perhaps it helps to keep it from fully settling into the lungs which may allow people to continue to breathe long enough to recover. This is just my best guess however as I am not a doctor so I definitely want to state that. I'm just a numbers guy that happened to notice a correlation in the numbers so far. I would also want to warn people reading this about cranking the heat up too high in their homes in hopes that it will help them with recovery. You wouldn't want to die from heat stroke before you have even had the chance to recover in the first place. These results could just be a trick of small numbers which might change later on as the numbers grow so that there is more data to work from, although so far there does seem to be a large correlation with recovery and heat, but the data suggests that room temperature to just barely over room temperature will work just fine.

Here are the new results for deaths per total outcomes using the numbers from the corona virus updates on 3/27/2020 :

below 45 degrees F, 29.95%
45 - 52 degrees F , 27.15%
53 - 59 degrees F , 30.43%
60 - 67 degrees F , 35.61%
68 - 75 degrees F , 10.95%
76 - 83 degrees F , 13.41%
above 83 degrees F, 13.51%

Interesting analysis, thank you! 

Warmer countries (ex. tropics) tend to have younger populations than cooler mid-latitude countries, and age is a very strong predictor for mortality with SARS-CoV2.  We are still trying to figure that out, it may have to do with damage to the lung tissue from years of smoking/pollution etc. 

I really don't expect temperature nor climate to impact this bug much.  It seemed to spread just fine in Singapore, which is close to the equator, and Latin America is now starting to wind up with infections. 

Warmer countries likely have more sunshine hours thus increasing the populations vitamin D.  This in turn, I believe, increases your immune system and likely helps fight this virus thus decreasing mortality.

Here are the newest results taken from the updates on saturday morning 4/4/2020. The numbers are high enough now that I just ran them "as is" this time using the straight-forward equation (deaths) / (deaths + recoveries) for all countries listed that have at least 30 outcomes and did not truncate any countries within the temperature ranges. I did, however, exclude 5 of the larger countries that contain more than a couple of the temperature ranges within their borders during the month of march, which are USA, chile, argentina, brazil, and china.

temperature ------- ratio -- # of countries

below 45 degrees F, 26.16% , 12
45 - 52 degrees F , 29.71% , 16
53 - 59 degrees F , 37.71% , 11
60 - 67 degrees F , 33.35% , 10
68 - 75 degrees F , 11.48% , 6
76 - 83 degrees F , 16.91% , 14
above 83 degrees F, 18.72% , 16

From what i have heard it has to do with the air and how moist the upper respiratory tract is.  With warmer drier air the virus is less likely to adhere to the cells in the nose and throat.  This is postulated why flu illness spreads less in the warmer months. But with everyone susceptible to this virus the R value would still be above 1 so eventually people would be infected it will just take longer to get the exponential growth going.     

Here is something interesting. I ran the numbers for the countries with at least 50 outcomes each, excluding the 5 countries I listed before. Of those 69 countries that remained I divided them into 8 temperature ranges with 8 or 9 countries within each one. I then truncated the countries with the top 2 and the bottom 2 ratios within each temperature range and averaged the remaining mid-ratio countries together. The number of countries averaged together within each range is the number of countries shown in the graph minus 4. Here are the results.

temperature ------ ratio -- # of countries

below 43 degrees F, 10.33% , 8
43 - 48 degrees F , 27.46% , 9
49 - 53 degrees F , 28.58% , 9
54 - 61 degrees F , 41.74% , 8
62 - 71 degrees F , 18.20% , 9
72 - 80 degrees F , 15.80% , 8
81 - 85 degrees F , 03.47% , 9
above 85 degrees F, 13.40% , 9

grav wrote: Here are the newest results taken from the updates on saturday morning 4/4/2020. The numbers are high enough now that I just ran them "as is" this time using the straight-forward equation (deaths) / (deaths + recoveries) for all countries listed that have at least 30 outcomes and did not truncate any countries within the temperature ranges. I did, however, exclude 5 of the larger countries that contain more than a couple of the temperature ranges within their borders during the month of march, which are USA, chile, argentina, brazil, and china. temperature ------- ratio -- # of countries below 45 degrees F, 26.16% , 12 45 - 52 degrees F , 29.71% , 16 53 - 59 degrees F , 37.71% , 11 60 - 67 degrees F , 33.35% , 10 68 - 75 degrees F , 11.48% , 6 76 - 83 degrees F , 16.91% , 14 above 83 degrees F, 18.72% , 16

This seems to correlate with what was reported when Wuhan first became an item; that is, it thrives in near the end range of either hot or cold, not so much mid range temps. 

 Thank you for your ongoing stats!

Well I can tell you since I started taking 2,000IU of D I have not gotten sick with colds, flu, sinus infections and I work with little kids, germ pockets!!! I started taking D because my endocrinologist said I was low in D.  Before I took D I was sick twice a year with sinus infections and or colds. 

With the exception of one species of salmon (sockeye), fish is not a brilliant source of D.  Mushrooms are better, if they have a 'suntan'.  Two portions of mushroom (one big one if you are a pig like me) will deliver a week's D requirement.  If they are 'white' forget it, they have been grown commercially without UV and are worthless.