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

Taking another look at the clusters the state is reporting again today based on their tracing. Some take aways from the data: It's unsurprising to see cases from Colleges & Universities going down given that many have been sending students home for weeks now, if they hadn't closed down the campus a month ago after Thanksgiving break. Social Gatherings, Industrial Settings, and Restaurants & Food Courts increased dramatically and pulled away from K-12 schools (causing their tier to break apart the separation was so drastic).  Meanwhile,  Retail & Services reduced slightly. Restaurants have nearly 5 times the number of cases from clusters as Retail. Child Care, Hospitals, Other Healthcare, and Restaurants & Food Courts increased by 30 cases or more while others increased by 15 or fewer from last week's tally. In the last month, if we sort by number of cases and ignore residential-based settings Tier 1 - Childcare: 578 cases from 312 clusters Tier 2 - Hospitals...

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 about it:  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...

A bit of a good news/bad news situation today. Good news: It looks like new cases may be on the decline.  The week of Nov 29 had a daily average of 4629, the week of Dec 6 had 4621, and the week of Dec 13 had 4419.  At this rate, we'll be back to first-wave peak numbers in... 10 weeks?  Back in May, we saw average cases per day decrease by about 350 week-over-week for a few weeks till we got down to the point of deciding to re-open at which point we immediately saw a reduction in that trend and within a month had pretty much stalled out.  We'll see what happens in the coming weeks.  I would also suggest we take the potential reduction in case counts with a bit of a grain of salt given that Dec 21 (Monday last week) has captured the highest single day increase crown and Dec 22 is the 5th highest and may well become 4th within a few days if it isn't bypassed by a day from this week. Bad news: The death rate is increasing rapidly.  The week of Nov 29 had a dai...

Today I'm taking another look at the recent clusters.  I provide the tiers in detail below, but here's what I see in the numbers and easily distinguished tiers: Childcare is by far the biggest spreader. Social Gatherings indeed continue to be among the next group as do Restaurants & Food Courts and Industrial Settings. K-12 Schools were just below that. Hospitals are dangerous but they're always dangerous, because that's where you find a concentration of sick people. The state has decided to continue to blame everything on social gatherings and pay lip service to doing something by reducing capacity at restaurants and retail ... but by not shutting things down, childcare is a necessity to continue businesses being open and we still will see cases pile up from the top 3 tiers of case creators and top 2 tiers of cluster creators. You know, it's almost like the Governor doesn't actually care to try to drive down the numbers the way we did back in April/May...

  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 Information right next to the city/town name is the most recent information and the furthest to the right is the furthest back.  Each number is the outcome of taking this week's data, subtracting the data from 2 weeks ago, and dividing by 14 (to get the per day) and then dividing by the population of the location (to get the per person) and the...

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 10...

So, I predicted back on Dec 7 that by the end of the year, we would reach 12,000 deaths ... then somehow I forgot that it was predicted for the end of the month and starting thinking I had predicted it for 25-Dec.  Yesterday I was excited to see that we may not reach my prediction by the 25-Dec but I am now doubly sad.... For one thing, the prediction was for the end of the month and the way things are going we are ABSOLUTELY going to reach it.  For another... at 11,963 today, we would only need to see the count increase by 37 tomorrow and seeing as that was a day-over-day overall increase nearly 80 today and the by-date increases not being below 45 in 2 weeks and not below 40 going back to Dec 3.... well, that suggests that we will reach 12,000 tomorrow (even if not reported on till the day after).     Hospitals also continue to fill up.  ICU saw a 6.7% increase and intubations have increased by 12% in the last 7 days.  Even general hospitalizations saw a ...

Just saw an FB ad by the state of MA to people in Lowell saying they're at high risk for COVID-19 and telling them not to travel out of state unless absolutely necessary and not to visit with friends and family outside their households .... but yeah, you should absolutely go to restaurants and stuff like that, right? No, seriously, this is all on the Baker administration. Btw, based on last week's weekly cities/towns report, Lawrence had seen 2.87% of their population catch COVID-19 in the preceding 2 weeks! So, yeah, they're a pretty high risk community. Oh, also, at 68 cases per day per 100k, traveling WITHIN MA is a risky scenario, why bother mentioning don't travel out of state unless necessary, just don't travel.  Don't go anywhere in MA because you're so much more likely to catch it here than many other states. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed.

 Prediction check in time. By today, the week of Dec 6-Dec 11 would have seen no weekday below 5,000 new cases This prediction turned out not to come true... Friday from that week still stands just short of the total with 4.898.   By today, the week of Dec 6-Dec 11 would have seen an average of 4,750 new cases per day or higher Great news: we haven't reached this mark.  We sit at 4,601.8 as of today! By  today, the death count would reach 11,500. Sadly, we reached that level earlier this week and are now at 11.640 By Christmas, we will reach 12,000 deaths We're still seeing deaths at a lower rate than what would get us here, but, so that's good, but what's bad is that we're also still seeing daily death counts that are higher than we did a couple weeks and double what we saw at the start of November Summary: While we're still doing poorly and far worse than we were at the end of November, we're doing better than I had predicted so we're not getting worse...

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: 40.4< - 33.6<- 24.9<- 24.4< - 21.8 < - 24.7 < - 15.4 < -   7.6 <-   5.6 < -   8.7 <- 11.1 <-   9.2 < -   5.0 Charlestown:         46.4 <- 42.7 < - 26.9 < -22.8<- 22.8 < - 30.5 < - 18.0 < - 11.8 < -   7.4 <-   4.4 < - ...