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

In case you were thinking that the 1,626 average daily cases from the week of Mar 14 was an aberration and that we were actually still seeing lower case counts, Monday through Wednesday of this past week each had over 2,000 cases, single-day count that we had seen reached only once before going back through Feb 12... and this past week's numbers are still increasing.  And even counting Thursday's count which is absolutely not where it will end up, the first 5 days currently have an average of 1,804 cases per day, bringing us back to where we were in early February.  I fully expect the past week to end up being a 3rd straight week of increased cases.  We likely won't reach the 2,366 average from the week of Jan 31, but I predict we'll be over the 1,793 average from the week of Feb 7. Deaths are also looking likely to be on the rise again.  After slowing the decrease in daily deaths for weeks, going from 47.6 to 43.7 to 38.9 to 32.7 the weeks of Feb 14 through Mar 7, w...

Data is from Feb 21 to Mar 20. Housing-related clusters not included, because those cases are really caused from spread from somewhere else, child care continues to be far beyond all other spreaders.  They are roughly where they were at the last check.  It's almost like kids really do spread this disease.  Colleges & Universities were surprisingly good at containing clusters in the fall but they seem to have relaxed since then, just like everyone else, though there are slightly fewer cases this time... maybe it was mostly that they did a horrible job when bringing students back?  Restaurants re-opening appears to have caused greater spread as they more than doubled the cases (with roughly the same number of clusters) as last review... and we can expect the same from K-12 schools next as they're forced to return to in-person over the next month (they've already increased their case counts by the way).  Organized Athletics/Camps also saw their case count incre...

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 then multi...

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...