Last week, I published a post about the burgeoning spread of Coronavirus infections, based on the perspectives of my brother, Nelson Nones, who lives and works in East Asia.

I’ve now received an updated analysis from him which is quite interesting.  It’s based on plotting COVID-19 infection rates against average February temperatures for 123 countries.

Here are his findings:

• The world’s worst COVID-19 hotspots (China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland) are clustered in a February temperature band ranging from -9 to +7 degrees C.
• The world’s least contagious COVID-19 countries are clustered in a February temperature band ranging from +10 to +28 degrees C. Among those, the poorest countries are the least contagious; the richest (Singapore, Australia and Malaysia) are the most. Presumably this is because international travel is more common in richer countries.
• Finland, the US, Japan, UK, Taiwan and Thailand lie near the best-fitting trend.
• With the progression of the seasons, mean temperatures in the US will climb from -4C in February to +20C in July. Following the best-fitting curve, this means the US infection rate would be 63% (nearly two-thirds) lower in July than the present 4 cases per million.

Nelson’s conclusion:  “The pandemic won’t last!”

In conducting his analysis, Nelson used COVID-19 case data and country populations come from the worlometers.info news feed. Average February temperature data come from the World Bank.

These are interesting stats, to be sure — and interesting prognostications as well.  Caution should be the watchword in these times.  But the Coronavirus news may be uniformly brighter as the seasons warm.

What are your thoughts?  Feel free to share your views in the comment section below.