Fun with MA COVID-19 Reporting - 08-Dec-2020 Edition

Gov. Baker announced today that we will be scaling back to Phase 3 Step 1 of the re-opening plan.  Let me be perfectly clear in my response to this.  In response to a huge increase in cases and hospitalizations, Baker has decided that the proper thing to do is to scale back to a re-opening phase under which we had already been increasing our cases and hospitalizations.  We saw our fewest cases back at the end of June and then started increasing immediately in July after we had moved forward to Phase 2 Step 2 AND BEFORE we moved to Phase 3 Step 1.

Make no mistake, Gov Baker's setting us back to Phase 3 Step 1 is not an effort to reduce the spread since in order to do that you would need to return to a reopening phase here the spread was, you know, being reduced.  Instead, this is an effort to pretend he's doing something about the spread when he very much isn't.

Oh, and today we know that last week had an average daily increase of 4,092 cases per day (and that number will continue increasing for days to come).  At our peak during the first wave, the average reached  2,177.  The week of Nov 15 had an average of 2,628.

Oh, and the weekday counts for last week... 5,440 for Monday, 5,765 for Tuesday, 5,587 for Wednesday, and, again, with days of increasing to come, sits at 4,987 and Thursday at 3,885.  These are made that much more astonishing when you remember that we hadn't seen a single day reach 3,000 until Nov 9 (including the first wave) and hadn't seen a single day reach 3,500 until Nov 16 and hadn't seen a single day reach 3,800 until (checks again) oh, right, MONDAY LAST WEEK.... and now all 5 weekdays are higher than 3,800?!?

Positive test rate, again, not percent of individuals who test positive but percent of overall tests that come back positive, has an overall 7-day weighted average of 5.81%.  If you remove higher ed and their massive testing campaign that result in a super low positive test rate, you get a 7-day weighted average of 7.76%.  A friendly reminder at this point that Gov Baker considers a high risk is 4% for larger populations and 5% for moderately sized populations.  To get back to a date where the non-higher ed average was below 5% you have to go back to Nov 24 where we saw the last of 3 days where the rate was 4.85-4.98%... before that you have to go back to Nov 10.  So... even by Baker's ridiculousness we've been in the danger zone for nearly a month without him doing anything and now he's shocked and dismayed that people risked their ability to keep the economy not completely and totally failing in order to see friends and family during a major holiday?!?  Oh, and starting Dec 1, we have had a 7-day weight average positive test rate of 7.48% or higher (not counting higher ed) and before Dec 1 you have to go back to Jun 2 to find a day reaching that high.

The long and short of it is that Gov Baker is blaming people for behaving in risky behaviors other than those he wanted them to at a time where we were seeing huge increases in cases and hospital use and a steady increase in death rate.  He wants credit for putting the breaks on and bringing us back to a re-opening phase under which we were seeing increasing cases... which is not so much putting the breaks on as letting up slightly on the accelerator while you're in a car that has been dropped from an airplane.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay UTTERLY PISSED AT BAKER!