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

Just a quick review of last week's predictions: My prediction was that by the end of the week, the prior week's average will turn out to be higher than 2,50 0. At 2,599, that checks out.  By this time, no single weekday from the week of Nov 15 will have had fewer than 2,800 cases. The lowest count is 2,783 currently so this hasn't been reached yet. Continued prediction: By Christmas,  we will have reached 11,500 deaths (confir med + probable) This prediction would require us to average 27.8 deaths per day ... the week before last we averaged 27 and the somewhat-stable numbers from this past week average 29, so we'll see. No new predictions this week because Thanksgiving throws things a bit out of wack.  The case count for Thursday will be super low because who gets tested unless absolutely necessary on a holiday... Though, Thursday's cases are already 1,759 and have a week to go before they stop increasing. Stay safe. Stay Sane. Stay informed.

MA has added VT to its list of "high risk" for COVID-19 states... VT which has 12.5 cases per 100,000 people per day for the last week vs MA's 36.8 cases per 100,000 people per day for the week of Nov 15... are you kidding me with this? Like, I get it, you can be high risk and call someone else high risk but perhaps DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR OWN RISK STATUS AT THAT POINT?!?

The week before this past week now sits with an ave rage fo  2,573  cases per day, compared to the week before with 2,414 and the next highest week back in April of 2,177.  The spread seemed to have slowed, which is great, but, well, Thanksgiving and all... Until Nov 9, we had not seen any single day with more than 2,990 cases.... In the 3 weeks since, we've already seen 3 and, given that this past week has Monday already at 2,895 and Tuesday already at 2,704, I think it's safe to say we'll have seen 2 or 3 more by this time next week. We've reached the death rate we last saw the week of June 14 (average was  26.14 that week, 27 last week and  27.5  rom this week's Sun-Wed counts, Thurs is still too soon to know). Hospitalizations yesterday grew more than any day since April 21.  The average increase over the last 7 days was 22 and the average increase for the preceding 7 days (including 2 days of decreases) was 29.7...  just for comparison, from May through Septemb

Green  - Less than 4 cases per 100,000 people per day Yellow   - Greater than or equal to 4 and less than 8 cases per 100,000 people per day Orange  - Greater than or equal to 8 and less than 16 cases per 100,000 people per day Red  - Greater than or equal to 16 and less than 24 cases per 100,000 people per day  Maroon - Greater than or equal to 24 and less than 40 cases per 100,000 people per day Purple - Greater than or equal to 40 and less than 64 cases per 100,000 people per day Black   - Greater  than  or equal to 64  cases  per 100,000 people per day Allston/Brighton:  24.4< - 21.8 < - 24.7 < - 15.4 < -   7.6 <-   5.6 < -   8.7 <- 11.1 <-   9.2 < -   5.0 Charlestown:         22.8<- 22.8 < - 30.5 < - 18.0 < - 11.8 < -   7.4 <-   4.4 < -   3.7 < -   4.0 <-   4.8 Dorchester:            47.6<- 44.2 < - 64.0 < - 41.6 < - 26.5 < - 19.8 <- 18.9 < - 15.8 <- 12.4 < -   7.9 Back Bay, ...:         33.2<- 31.

Just a friendly reminder that I'm using state numbers for total cases in reporting from each week but using a calculation that is a better approximation of the cases we've seen every 2 weeks by taking the totals from the report 2 weeks ago and comparing to the report of the week.  For an explanation of why this is more appropriate, read over my post from a few weeks ago:  https://funwithmacovid-19reporting.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-weekly-community-numbers-reported.html Green  - Less than 4 cases per 100,000 people per day Yellow   - Greater than or equal to 4 and less than 8 cases per 100,000 people per day Orange  - Greater than or equal to 8 and less than 16 cases per 100,000 people per day Red  - Greater than or equal to 16 and less than 24 cases per 100,000 people per day  Maroon - Greater than or equal to 24 and less than 40 cases per 100,000 people per day Purple - Greater than or equal to 40 and less than 64 cases per 100,000 people per day Black   - Greater  than  or eq

Periodically, I look at states and countries where I have friends and/or family to see how those states are doing with COVID-19 cases. I always take a look at the population size of the state as well so that the comparison I'm making to MA numbers is somewhat valid.  Today let's go back over the non-New England states I looked at earlier in November: California, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington D.C. For comparison, MA reached 2.2 cases per 100,000 people per day in between waves and has since increased to roughly 37 (having been increasing for 4 and a half months). California did the best with stopping the curve early and driving the cases down before re-opening and as a result of their efforts to limit the spread were still seeing only 11 cases per 100,000 people per day on Nov 3.  They then saw a rather sizable increase over November, now seeing 32.1 cases per 100,000 people per day. Florida peaked way higher than anybody I've seen

Periodically, I look at states and countries where I have friends and/or family to see how those states are doing with COVID-19 cases. I always take a look at the population size of the state as well so that the comparison I'm making to MA numbers is somewhat valid. Today, let's take another look at the other states in New England. The southern 3 states are seeing continued significant increases.  New Hampshire, not wanting to be left out of the more populace states, is also rapidly increasing cases.  Maine saw a steep climb till the first few days of November and then slowed since Nov 5.  And then there's Vermont, who saw a steep incline Nov 10 through Nov 15 but, while it's still far too soon to tell, may have stabled off since then. That explanation of where we stand is somewhat mimicked by current level of spread too... with New Hampshire not being as high as the 3 southern states in the group and Vermont and Maine both being significantly less.  The daily cases per

Periodically, I look at states and countries where I have friends and/or family to see how those states are doing with COVID-19 cases. I always take a look at the population size of the state as well so that the comparison I'm making to MA numbers is somewhat valid. Today, I'm reviewing some countries I last reviewed at the end of Sep/start of Oct: Brazil, India, Japan, and UK. Numbers for comparison: MA True spread started early March First wave peak: Apr 14-Apr 20 - 33 cases per 100,000 per day Bottom between waves: Jun 28-Jul 4 - 2.2 cases per 100,000 per day Current (period includes days that are still increasing): 36.2 cases per 100,000 per day USA I suppose you could say we saw a bottom between second and third "waves" on Sep 5-Sep 11 with 10.7 cases per 100,000 per day Oct 25-Oct 31 saw 24.6 cases per 100,000 per day The last 7 days saw 52.8 cases per 100,000 per day Note, peaks and valleys within the USA are an interesting topic because there have been

The week before this past week now sits with an ave rage fo 2,416  cases per day, compared to the next highest week back in April of 2,177.  That's a difference of 239  per day... we saw fewer than 238 on average for 6 weeks the past summer!  We even saw a period of 18 straight days where we never reached 238 cases.  The difference between the weeks of Nov 1 and Nov 8 is 641.8 ... or an increase of 36 percent!  This is not a slow increase we're seeing.  A 36% week-over-week increase is something we've only seen twice since April 5, and of course both of those were in the prior 3 weeks (there was a slight reprieve of only a 15 percent increase the week before last). This past Monday's case count is higher than any other day, bar none.  Tuesday's case count is already higher than all but 4 days, 2 of which are in the previous week and 2 of which are in April. We've reached the death rate we last saw the week of June 21 (average was 23.85 that week, 24.43  last we

I'm still trying to figure out what color coding makes sense.... I've done more of a Fibonacci sequence once we get to red so that the upper limit of each color extends further as we get into higher case count. Another thing I'm going to start doing is having the chronological order go right to left so that the most recent update is closest to the name of the locale.   Green  - Less than 4 cases per 100,000 people per day Yellow   - Greater than or equal to 4 and less than 8 cases per 100,000 people per day Orange  - Greater than or equal to 8 and less than 16 cases per 100,000 people per day Red  - Greater than or equal to 16 and less than 24 cases per 100,000 people per day  Maroon - Greater than or equal to 24 and less than 40 cases per 100,000 people per day Purple - Greater than or equal to 40 and less than 64 cases per 100,000 people per day Black   - Greater  than  or equal to 64  cases  per 100,000 people per day Allston/Brighton: 21.8 < - 24.7 < - 15.4 < -

I see various people pointing to Europe as proof that you can combat COVID-19 while keeping kids in classrooms.  I figured that it might be a good time for me to do a run down of the EU overall. So.... Periodically, I look at states and countries where I have friends and/or family to see how those states are doing with COVID-19 cases. I always take a look at the population size of the state as well so that the comparison I'm making to MA numbers is somewhat valid.  Today: EVERY EU COUNTRY! Buckle up, it's gonna be a long trek.  Feel free to look for a particular country that is of interest to you.  They're alphabetically organized.  Oh, and UK, that's right, you don't get a check in ... you know what you've done to deserve that. Austria is seeing case counts around 9 times as many as their first peak Austria is still increasing In the last 7 days, they had an average daily increase of 79.5 cases per 100,000 people, nearly twice the rate of the USA's 49.6 and

I'm still trying to figure out what color coding makes sense.... I've done more of a Fibonacci sequence once we get to red so that the upper limit of each color extends further as we get into higher case count. Another thing I'm going to start doing is having the chronological order go right to left so that the most recent update is closest to the name of the locale.   One last change, I'm going to use a better approximation of the cases we've seen every 2 weeks by taking the totals from the report 2 weeks ago and comparing to the report of the week.  For an explanation of why this is more appropriate, read over my post from a few weeks ago:  https://funwithmacovid-19reporting.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-weekly-community-numbers-reported.html Green  - Less than 4 cases per 100,000 people per day Yellow   - Greater than or equal to 4 and less than 8 cases per 100,000 people per day Orange  - Greater than or equal to 8 and less than 16 cases per 100,000 people per day Re

Last week's daily average is now up to 2326.1.  Reminder, the highest rate of any 7-consecutive-day period before that was Apr 16-22 with just 2217.7 and additional reminder that last week's case count is expected to still increase. Last week also saw high individual days, as you might have imagined... Friday's total, still seeing increases, is only met by 5 days in April (and no days since, including the week before last). Wednesday - only met by 4 days Tuesday - only met by 2 days Thursday - only met by 1 day (and only 46 cases away from bypassing it) Monday - single day increase we've seen bar none The death count for last week ticked up again and now sits at 23.8 per day, matching the week of June 21. Hospitalizations saw another day of increases by greater than 40+ (only 8 days from April 21 to the start of Nov reached this increase)... and we've now seen 4 days in the first 17 days of November reach that... three of those being the last 3 days... By the way, h

So... let me get this straight, we're launching the first phase of our state-led COVID-19 testing initiative in schools NOW ? I mean, better late than never but... it's November and Gov Baker's administration has been doing a full-court press to get EVERYBODY to go back to in-person schooling ~checks calendar~ over 3 months? Also, Gov Baker, not for nothing but downplaying COVID-19 and your own responsibility to govern is also the kind of activity that will lead to heightened risk of the disease spreading this holiday season. Gov Baker's inability to grasp the psychology of the situation is mind blowing.   And lastly, I like that the administration keeps saying that there's been limited spread within schools AND that we're doing really well with contract tracing and yet, if you discount places of residence, schools are in the top tier of locations where clusters are taking place and where people are getting sick. Luckily they aren't sharing where 89% of the

Well, we did it.  Last week now sets the record for a single Sunday-to-Saturday week of cases.  Nov 6 kicks off a 7-day period that now holds the record for any 7-day consecutive period.  I expect Nov 8 to overtake that as Nov 13's and Nov 14's cases continue to come in... probably tomorrow will see that update. Last week's death rate isn't close to April levels, nor should it be, we didn't know how to treat people back then.  But it is now seen to be higher than any week since June 21. We're also still waiting to have a day where the hospital use goes down ... it's be going up for 12 straight days now with only one of those days being a single digit climb.... and even the rate of increase appears to be speeding up with the last 2 days' increases being matched by only 2 other days since April 21.  Between April 21 and the start of November, there were 14 days that saw hospitals increase patients by 30+ people ... that's 14 days out of 183 ... In the

Last week's COVID-19 cases are ALREADY higher than the previous week, even though they'll still be coming in for days.  By tomorrow, we'll see that last week had more cases than the week of April 26, bringing us to another milestone in matching the peak of our first wave.  At that point, only the weeks of April 12 and April 19 will have had greater case counts. Tuesday was a higher single day case count (already) than all but 4 days (except Monday).  Monday had 152 more cases (so far) than the single highest day before (bar none).  Wednesday and Thursday already saw a higher case counts than any day from May 2 through Nov 2. We're approaching the death rate we last saw the week of June 21 (average was 23.85 that week, 23 so far in the last 6 days). Oh, and we've now had 10 straight days of increased hospital use. A quick review of last week's predictions: I continued my predictions about Baker not doing anything significant to stop the spread. Yep My prediction

@#$%.... just @#$%.... no, I take that back... @#$@ing $@#%-ton of @#$@^$%$ Ok, because, you know... Last week is now up to 1772 cases per day which is greater than the week of April 5, so we're down to 3 weeks in April that saw cases as high and only 19 days that started 7-day periods of such high cases. There have been 21 days so far with 2000+ cases... 3 of them being last week and 2 of them being this week.  There have been 3 days with 2900+ cases, one of them was this past Monday.... Monday which is still seeing increases to the tally... yes, that Monday... which now has a total of 3098, jumping past the previous single-day high of 2990 from April 17.  Oh, and there have been only 7 days that reached what Tuesday currently stands at (2414), and you guessed it, 2 of those were this week and 5 of them were at the peak of the first wave back in April. This week, where multiple days will still see triple digit increases for days to come, already has more cases than any other week

Baker's reluctance to shut anything down, even as we re-open field hospitals and see case counts higher than we have ever previously and work on re-opening field hospitals, is exactly in line with his political leanings.  If you're surprised by this, it is only because you haven't paid attention to what he believes the role of government is in society. Baker, for those not paying close enough attention, does not believe that government is there to support the populace and small businesses.  This can be demonstrated by his general effort to damage public transportation.  During the years of the Big Dig, Baker was the architect of the financing of the high way project and placed billions of dollars of debt on the MBTA's shoulders.  After this was done, he has been a proponent for the MBTA being self-sufficient instead of a government service.   This idea should not be surprising to anybody.  One of the main differences between the parties is this perspective on the underl

The state uses the currently known count for the last Saturday (a number 4 days in the making) and the Sunday 2 weeks prior (a number 17 days in the making) to determine their 2-week increase in case count per city/town. This is downplaying the count as explained in my post https://funwithmacovid-19reporting.blogspot.com/2020/10/why-weekly-community-numbers-reported.html   I'm going to start doing the more true calculation going forward for my weekly Greater Greater Somerville reporting.  Just thought I'd give you preview of how this adjusts the numbers: Area - State reported - More realistic number Arlington -    5.6 -   7.5 Boston  -     23.1 -  24.5 Cambridge -  8.9 -   9.9 Chelsea -     57.8  - 60.5 Fitchburg -  48.8  - 50.2 Holliston -   16.2  - 17.1 Lawrence -  82.6  - 88.4 (a top range of 40+ for my color coding really may not be sufficient) Lowell -       42.1  - 46.1 Lynn -          45.1  - 48.4 Malden -      22.7  - 26.1 Medford -    15.9  - 18.8 Quincy -        9.5