Fun with MA COVID-19 Reporting 26-Oct-2020 edition

Yesterday's prediction for today has come true and boy howdy has it. (prepare for a bit of a rant that's full of numbers)
  • We now have 3 days last week above 1,000 new cases, 1 day with 963 and 1 with 847. 
  • Between May 27 and Oct 13 there is exactly 1 day that reached 847. There were 3 such days the week before last, so, you know, the lowest day last week is pretty damn high.
  • Between May 22 through to a week ago yesterday, there were 0 days that reached 963.
  • To find a day that reached 1044, you have to go back to May 19.
  • Thursday now has 1183 cases. Let me say this again, there have been 0 days from May 22 through to the start of last week that reached 963, not a single one and last Thursday's known case count, which we can expect to increase by double-digits still tomorrow, is now known to be 1183.
  • The average for last week (and there are still several days before this stops growing) is now at 831. To reach that average, you have to go back to the week of May 17, which is nothing special given that's been the case for the preceding 3 weeks, but what is special is that the week of May 17 had an average of 854 cases ... so... new prediction: I expect last weeks' known case count to be higher than May 17th's by tomorrow.
On the bright side, it looks like only 109 people died last week (putting the average per day at 15)... we may see that increase still but not likely by enough to overtake the preceding week's tally of 139... but this is still higher than any week other than the preceding week going all the way back through July 12.

Our total deaths currently sites at 9,881, so as long as the death rate doesn't come back up this week, my prediction yesterday that we would reach 10,000 won't come true... that's a pretty big if though given everything else.

What's everything else? 

How about a positivity test rate for individuals that has been, with 1 day's exception, above 5.0% for the last 11 days (just a reminder, the same rate was below 2.5%, with the exception of 1 day, from July 5 through September 21 and hadn't reached 5.0% until the start of the last 11 days going back as far as this data point was reported).

Since the Baker administration prefers to tout the positivity test rate for all tests (which includes repeats), sure, let's look at that... it hadn't broken past 1.2% going back to August 20 through Sep 25. We've seen 1 day below 1.2% since October 9, none since October 14, only 1 day below 1.5% since October 16, and 3 days above 2.0% since Oct 10.... and the 7-day average is now 111% higher than the lowest value we reached.

Hospitalizations, ICU usage, and intubated patient count all continue to increase. Good news, there are still days where they decrease but, bad news, never sufficiently to shift the 7-day average to being negative going back over a month.

Oh, and coming back to the case count for last week just to close us out... yes, it's higher than the preceding week so we've now seen, with 2 weeks' exception, 16 weeks straight of increasing cases.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed.

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