Fun with MA COVID-19 Reporting - 04-Mar-2021 Edition

Well, it was fun while it lasted.  The decline in cases appears to have ended with last week having more cases than the week preceding it.  We'll see in about a week if this was a blip but I had previously pointed out that the decline in cases had already slowed to a trickle as of last week so there is no real surprise that we're not climbing again.  

Why are we climbing when we've been vaccinating people for 3 months?  Well, there are a few things to consider:

1) We've only vaccinated just under 9% of our population in those 3 months.  While we can expect the rate to have improved over that time and to continue to improve, that's a far cry from quick.

2) Gov Baker relaxed restrictions so we would expect people to have followed his intended lead in engaging in the risky behaviors he's pushing for.

3) The same relaxing of restrictions mentioned in the second point also means that more people think that things are better now.  This messaging is dangerous as can be seen by the slow down in the reduction of cases and deaths and now the uptick in cases.

All in all, while we may have COVID fatigue, COVID clearly isn't tiring of spreading and claiming more lives and more people's long-term health.

And cases going back up isn't the only bad sign.

Deaths have been on the decline for 4 weeks now, but the last 2 weeks' decline was significantly less than the preceding 2 weeks.  They declined by 11.6 deaths per day from the week of Jan 24 to the week of Jan 30, then another 11.9 deaths per day, then only 2 deaths per day and 4.8 deaths per day.... Last week is now sitting at 42.4 deaths per day.  For comparison, we were at 42.3 for the week of May 31 and from June 28 through October 25, we didn't get above a daily average of 20.0 in any given week.

Hospitalizations have been reducing since the start of January, but each of the last 3 weeks have seen a steady slowdown in that decrease.  If you don't count Sundays large increase, this week has still seen an even slower decrease in hospitalizations than last week.... if you count Sunday's increase, the decrease this week dips to only a reduction of 4.75 cases per day.  Intubations and ICU draw down has been a bit more steady though.

Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay understanding we're not in a safe space yet and we should not be engaging in avoidable indoor activities with others outside our households.