Fun with COVID-19 reporting in MA (and elsewhere)

Ok, for those of you in the back... "state wide [but not random and certainly not everybody in the state nor representative of everybody in the state]" testing rate of 1% vs "every college student" testing rate of 0.1% means NOTHING.... it does not mean that there are fewer per cases per 100,000 in either direction. PLEASE stop comparing positivity test rates that cannot rationally be compared. Look at this a different way: would you compare 2 polls about the importance wearing glasses when one is conducted among people who are going into a LensCrafters in Malden vs people who are going to going to Market Basket in Somerville and come to the conclusion that people in Malden have more eye problems than those in Somerville? https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/08/31/broad-institute-college-students-positive-thousand?fbclid=IwAR0eYZzT-qYE8iGFgox-NBtrgClBHKoS3K83WLLeT5rc4KU8axXvXgdlHzI

 I'm just gonna leave this here... https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/29/us/university-of-alabama-covid-19-cases-trnd/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0tiSatCbQEUaREGHWT7Q-7F8noQoynbhiaqWssq2G3ssvLQZGRrgyypwA

Good news: they're testing players for COVID-19 Bad news: they start the game before getting the tests back apparently? https://247sports.com/Article/Iowa-high-school-football-game-canceled-due-to-positive-COVID-19-test-North-Scott-Muscatine-150815600/?fbclid=IwAR13k9O0JkbKNfeecO1lW3dIwlOIKglOjZSruUiN4CVYhQalSRHCbncrujM

GTFO! TLDR: we've seen several people now get re-infected and the latest one got more sick than he was with the original infection. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-19-reinfection-reported-nevada-patient-researchers-say-n1238679?fbclid=IwAR08xkG3y78CLFQsvu14i2ETlSkqAS_stO1IlJA9MxD9_gSEFCMKMQR_zaM

Last week is already the worst week for average daily new cases since May 31… and we're not past the period where we can expect that to climb further. This week we've already seen the highest single day case count since June 3rd even though the numbers for that day will continue increasing for a few more days…. Oh, and last week we saw 2 single day increases nearly as bad. It also now seems that, while we saw the low in new cases at the end of June, we may have seen the low in new deaths at the start of August. Since then, we've seen a steady increase. Now, that increase is not particularly steep... starting July 5, we went from 18.2 -> 15.1 -> 15 -> 14.8 -> 12.7 -> 14 -> 15... and we're currently at 15.6 if you only count days likely to be near their final result (ie, Sunday through Tuesday... between yesterday and today, Tuesday's count went from 10 to 16). Oh, and we haven't seen a single day since July 18 where ICU count decreased more than

Not for nothing but MA has now had >9,000 deaths from COVID-19, so, yeah, passed that milestone...

Ok, well, looking at the state-wide numbers was pretty depressing. Hopefully the local numbers will be better because surely all the college students returning will make everything better for us. Arlington - Prior 14-day average daily cases per 100,000 people barely moved, well, it doubled, but still, barely moved... it's 0.6 having been 0.2 last week... see what I mean? hardly worth mentioning. Keep up the good work. Also, thank you for re-opening your schools as full-time distance learning. Boston - Your 14-day case count went from 627 last week to 691 this week. Daily cases per 100,000 only increased from 6.4 to 7.1... but, you know, that's still pretty bad... and going in the wrong direction.... continuously... for 4 weeks now (didn't go back further than the start of August, sorry). Might want to do better. Cambridge - You're actually, after a couple weeks of increasing 14-day case counts, doing slightly better. So, yeah, congrats to you, hope this starts a trend.

In the last 30 days we... Increased hospital use by 2 patients Increased ICU patients by 12 (though admittedly we reduced the intubated patients by 1) Saw 458 people die (and we're at 8,987 today so we'll likely top 9,000 tomorrow) Saw 8,705 new cases Went from 2 hospitals using surge capacity to 2 hospitals using surge capacity (breaking even is not a good trend) Went from seeing an average of 222 daily new cases the previous week to 278. Went from seeing 15 daily deaths the previous week to 14.85 (are we really going to call that improvement? how about when you consider that last week's average increased by 1.43 since yesterday?... don't worry, I'm sure we've stopped finding new deaths from last week at this point) Went from a 1.9% positive molecular test rate to 1.1% positive molecular test rate... while nearly doubling the number of molecular tests given (see, when you multiply the bottom part of the fraction by  and the overall fraction remains relatively c

Not a big surprise here but further evidence of what this administration considers important and what it doesn't care about: looking good and re-opening the country is important, the human death toll and preventing further spread of COVID-19 doesn't matter. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/world/covid-19-coronavirus.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20200826&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta&regi_id=97958018&segment_id=36961&user_id=937ecaabde9443da977df50302fa7443&fbclid=IwAR2GhvnDuELyCSRijWeKecuwJzjOk8bJoOCHQ_wNHRnXHAC6uY47dIQBsQc

"“children carried very high viral loads in their airway secretions, loads that were higher than adults who are hospitalized for their severe COVID illness.” [Lael Yonker] With respiratory viruses, in general, a higher viral load means the virus is more likely to pass from one person to another because it’s transmitted through droplets, she says." https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/08/20/children-covid-19-transmission?linkId=98052879&fbclid=IwAR0J01riPnnpppGxQG3QU16-IMZ9mpoXpVq4jAM33Qabut2HkIxJsL-y69Q

So... apparently the alarms that started going off a couple weeks back were sufficient to snap people back into realizing that we weren't actually done with our struggles with COVID-19... we've seen the rise in daily cases pause at a daily average of about 275 (up from 156 at the end of June). So... good news: we don't appear to be continuing to increase in daily new cases dramatically anymore but... bad news... oh, did you think everything was fine again? please just stop deluding yourself. 1) We still have about 275 new "confirmed" cases every day. I put "confirmed" in quotes because of the fact that the number for a given day still sometimes decrease even though we no longer are listing "probable" cases and instead only identifying the cases that the state lists as "confirmed". We're not driving down the cases or anything. While this may not sound bad, essentially it means we've given up on making things better and are

First off, stop making silly mistakes. Your website now has the link to today's raw data in the space designated for the link for previously daily charts and nothing in the space designated for the link to today's raw data. Next up... and I don't blame you if you stop now because this is about to get a bit depressing... We've seen roughly 1 more person hospitalized than leaving the hospital per day since the change in definition of a COVID-19 hospitalization back in mid-July... if you think that's good, keep in mind that we've also averaged 13.6 people dying per day in that time (pretending for a moment that the number per day of recent days won't go up for a little while). There is good news though... we have very slimly reduce the average of people dying from 18 at the start of July to 14 the week of July 27 and 11.1 the week August 1. I suspect Aug 2 to be an anomaly since the average for the week of Aug 9 is already at 12.16 and we can expect that to

Before I get started... there's no conspiracy theory here. I have no doubt that this is just errors in accounting). Also, if you're already depressed about the world and don't want to feel it more, you're totally free not to read on, but I will say that the next bit is just about accounting errors and unless you think about the numbers involved and what they mean, it's harmless fun. There's a break between that and the bit that gets depressing without having to think. Fascinating stuff out of yesterday's data. The daily case data is all "confirmed cases" right? So, you know, errors are made and you might expect a given day's numbers to go down a bit from time to time... however... ok, (these are all relative changes between Thursday's and Friday's reports) before I get to the week of July 26, the average from July 5 and July 12 went up ever so slightly... by 0.14... this happens, it's not a big deal. The week of July 19 remained exa

First, let me say that if you are having mental health issues related to hearing how bad things are, I'm sorry and you should feel free to walk away from my feed. It is partially for my own mental health that I am posting these alerts. That said, I was tempted to walk away from it for a little while given some of the recent interactions I've had related to the issue of others' mental health.... but today's report... jeez... I'm sorry, I gotta rant about it a little, cause it's not about the bad news but rather the change to the reporting (ok, it's a little about the bad news). Let's start with the weekly report. Bad news: Somerville's 14-day count of new cases increased from 37 to 40... this is not significant and relatively minor, but continues a bad trend line. Good news: the state considers our incident rate to be green, which they consider to be low enough to warrant drastically increasing the risky behavior. Better news: we don't care and ar

You know, it would make me feel much better about when we reduce the number of people in the ICU if it weren't always matched or exceeded by the number of people who died that day.... The last time more people left the ICU than people died from COVID-19 was July 18 (22 headcount reduction in ICU and 13 people died), before that was July 10 (11 headcount reduction and 10 deaths).... and those are the 2 days in July and August so far... that's it... every other day had more deaths than reduction in ICU headcount. Just sayin'. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay mathy.

We were decreasing the weekly average daily new cases by hundreds each week in May (1509 per day at the start of May, 1176 for the second week, 953 for the third, 580 for the fourth). Second week of June had 302 and then dipped to 238 for weeks, further dip to 222 for the week of June 28…. and then have increased by double digits every week since. We now have a week average for July 26 which is higher than any week since May 31 and that week's numbers can be expected to continue to increase for another few days. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay realistic about the simple fact that we are going in the wrong direction even before adding in in-person school and college students returning.

Me yesterday: "Back at the end of June, we saw a week where we did not have a single day with over 300 new cases. Last week there was not a single weekday with fewer than 380 (and the numbers are still growing daily)... and only 1 day under 415." Me today: "... and now we don't have a single weekday last week with fewer than 425 new cases... um... " Week - Average yesterday - Average today Jun 28 - 222.8 - 222.5 Jul 05 - 277.4 - 277.7 Jul 12 - 297.4 - 297.1 Jul 19 - 311.8 - 313.2  Jul 26 - 360.8 - 376.8 (cases tend to fluctuate by 1 or 2 on any given date more than 14 days ago and significantly more as you get closer to the current date) If you're only concerned with confirmed cases instead of confirmed+probable cases... Jun 28 - 155.7 Jul 05 - 199.1 Jul 12 - 211.8 Jul 19 - 221.1 Jul 26 - 284.4 I don't know what else to say. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay fucking pissed at Gov. Baker for not rolling us back to 2A yet.

Back at the end of June, we saw a week where we did not have a single day with over 300 new cases. Last week there was not a single weekday with fewer than 380 (and the numbers are still growing daily)... and only 1 day under 415. We continue to see a progression and already last week tops the charts for average new cases (including weekends) even though the numbers have not stopped increasing and won't stop for a while yet: Jun 28 - 222.8 Jul 05 - 277.4 Jul 12 - 297.4 Jul 19 - 311.8 Jul 26 - 360.8 Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay away from indoor dining and anything re-opened in phase 3.

Just a couple quick updates on yesterday's post: Average cases per day: week - average yesterday -> average today Jun 28 - 222.85 -> 222.85 Jul 5 - 277.57 -> 277.71 Jul 12 - 297 -> 297.71 Jul 19 - 304.57 -> 311.71 (and yes, we will still see more cases come in to push this even higher) Days with case count of 350+ Week of June 28 = 0 Week of July 5 = 1  Week of July 12 = 2 Week of July 19 = 5 Week of July 26 = 3 ALREADY... and we now have 2 days above 400.... Wednesday increased by 164 to reach 351, Thursday increased 222 to reach 317, and Friday increased 215 to reach 217... so, yeah. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed.

4th day straight of that note on ongoing delays impacting the number of cases for the day... I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care I don't care.... You know what I care about? Cases per day for the last month now show a weekly trend that is inescapably obvious as to its increase. Where yesterday, the average for the week of July 19 was only 1 additional case per day than the week of July 12, it's now 7.5 more cases per day for the same comparison.  So, the overall weekly averages: Jun 28 - 222.85 Jul 5 - 277.57 Jul 12 - 297 Jul 19 - 304.57 (and yes, we will still see more cases come in to push this even higher. You know what I care more about than that there is delayed reporting of cases causing the report for the given day to appear worse than the state wants us to think it is? The number of days where we see 350+ cases being reported continues to grow... Week of June 28 = 0 Week of July 5 = 1 (th