There should be a correlation between relative humidity and the transmission rate of COVID19. However, since there are no data available for transmission rate per day, I used the # of deaths as a surrogate (assuming time from infection to death to be the same for all cases).
- I checked the NY LaGuardia weather site and downloaded the max temperature and dew point for each day from March 1 through March 31.
- From this, I calculated the %Relative humidity for each day.
- I downloaded the # cumulative deaths beginning 1 march ending 31 march in NY city from another site (forget which). I plotted these against the day and found that a power function with an exponent of 4 best fitted the curve.
- Converted to per day deaths by subtracting successor from predecessor. Then took the 4th root of that because I wanted a transmission rate per day normalized to the same number of spreaders.
- Converted both to periodic functions by visiting the site which calculated the Fourier coefficients for me http://lampx.tugraz.at/~hadley/num/ch3/3.3a.php
- Plotted the ratio of coefficients for cos/sin against day (for each function). i.e. for relative humidity function and for # deaths per day function.
- Plotted trend line for each of these as a order 15 polynomial with each one > 0.999 R2.
- Took the ratio of the two polynomials coefficient for each term i.e. x, x^2, X^3...x^15.
- The ratios are constant for each term for the two polynomial functions at -0.5.
- Does this tell me that the # of deaths per day is correlated with the humidity levels? I don't really understand much about Fourier series and such...math novice...I don't know if I have a correlation or these ratios are supposed to be equal.