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

Imagine repeatedly increasing your child's risk of mental or physical health conditions... increasing the risk by around three quarters each time... maybe doing that annually or once every two years... all because we as a society aren't willing to wear masks around each other and and aren't willing to spend what it takes to improve schools' (and public buildings') air quality. How many times will an otherwise healthy child be infected before they have a neurological or mental health condition? How many times before they have a cardiovascular, respiratory, or gastrointestinal condition? The ongoing mass disabling event is not just about the elderly and those at greater risk... we are all at risk for long term impacts and the more chances you take the more at risk you are. Each time you pull the trigger (become infected) in this russian roulette is another chance to gain of a health condition you did not have before... and children will pull that trigger more time...

At this moment, roughly 63% of 12-29 year olds in MA are fully vaccinated. It's roughly the same percentage across for the 3 age ranges contained within this one. So... are young adults and parents just buying into the whole political antics thing or can we stop pretending that the political divide is not the only issue we're facing when trying to overcome COVID? By the way, the figure jumps to 76% for 30-39 year olds and gets progressively better as we look to older ranges (except 75+ year olds are lower than 65-74 year olds... still better than the rest of the population but it's an odd step down). For those looking forward to the 5-11 year olds being vaccinated... this will be great because, at about 7% of the state's population, they make up about 1.5 times as many people as the 12-15 population... a question will be whether we can actually get a high rate of them vaccinated quickly or if it'll take us 5 months to get to the 62% mark.

Barely a week in and we've already got a couple classes going into quarantine. Meanwhile, Baker's decision is that, since vaccinations are available for 12+, we should just let COVID-19 run its course. This is pointing to wanting to cause enough harm that those still holding off on getting the vaccine end up getting it due to the harm.... much like the lottery, this seems unlikely to work. All you have to do is look at other states to find that the rate hasn't ticked up much despite 100 cases per 100k people per day. It also ignores those that can't yet get vaccinated or are immunocompromised. https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/09/08/melrose-quarantine-baker-remote-school?fbclid=IwAR3EVBQudtaem7GOeOD4yARJUbO5MFd5w_HeWs8zm48AO0uHObKi03SI-N0

You gotta love when you see someone say "I know there's been research that shows that people who are vaccinated can still spread COVID-19, but I still don't believe that's the case"... even more delightful is when they're highly educated. In related news: the study recently that shows the impact of different kinds of masks on a person catching COVID-19 misses that the main point of wearing a mask is not to transmit to others once you're infected rather than to protect yourself... and with a disease that has a somewhat lagging indication, if you receive any, of whether you've been infected and are contagious, it's important to treat yourself as if you are contagious. One of the problems we keep facing with COVID-19 is asymptomatic spread, which means that lagging indication of being contagious is instead a lack-of-indication of being contagious.

Please note that I'm not saying that Pfizer is right, just looking at the rationale being reported for why the CDC doesn't think we need it. The CDC has announced they don't think we need to have a third vaccination shot at 6 months because the severe illness and deaths are still mostly among those that aren't vaccinated. A couple things about this. For one thing, the numbers being used to say that we don't need a booster shot right now is based on the percent of people being hospitalized and dying that are fully vaccinated. The vaccinations in the US started in December and really only started ramping up in January, so those that would even be appropriate for the third shot would only be 3.7% of the population. The other 44.5% of the population that is vaccinated (48.2% total) wouldn't be at the point of needing the third dose yet... that's 92% of those that are vaccinated that are not yet ready for a 6-month booster shot and so your super small percen...

Cases continue to fall but slower and slower. Deaths continue to fall but far too slowly and we have yet to see a single day where 0 people have died. Number of hospital beds used is declining still but we're still only seeing single digit reductions per day with last week being a 3 week low in those reductions.  ICU bed use and intubations also continue to decline slowly.  Currently about 30 ICU beds are being used and steadily 1.8 people leaving the ICU on average since April 12.  Intubations are a little lower in both counts with 15 people intubated currently and relatively consistently about 1.2 people being taken off Intubation since April 12. New hospitalizations were continuing to fall through last week, though the decrease from the week of June 7 to the week of June 14 was barely anything (15.6 new hospitalizations vs 13.4 new hospitalizations) and it's too soon to really draw a conclusion from this week's counts (averaging 13.7 for the 3 days so far). Ok, so, tod...

I'm excited for the reduced COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in MA but if you're making any argument and say something as simply factually wrong as "we have had days with no deaths" you lose me right there and lose my faith in the rest of what you claim. There have been days where we didn't know of the new deaths yet, but looking at the most recent MA report, it's clear as day that there have been no days going back to March 17, 2020 that have not had at least 1 death. In fact, as of now, we've only seen 1 day since March 20, 2020 where we've only had 1 death, never mind none. Why can't we be excited about the reduced numbers of deaths without lying or misleading about it.... perhaps it's because it doesn't paint the picture of being done with COVID-19... Ok, so, with that out of the way... cases do continue to decrease... and that decrease continues too slow. Last summer, the lowest 7-day average started on 28-Jun-2020... wi...

I'm excited! I'm excited! I still have an A1C above 10% (6.5% being the cut off to be diagnosed as type 2 diabetic) but I got down below the 20% I jumped up to recently after doubling my A1C. As a result of my decline in A1C, I'm going to stop exercising and watching what I eat, even though in the last couple weeks my efforts have shown less progress than they had a month ago..... what? you think that's a bad plan? You think I should keep working toward my goals and not let up, especially with cases not reducing as quickly with the current restrictions as they were just a few weeks ago and that I should be cautious about the plan to re-open further and then go to phase 4 in March even though the schedule for vaccinations doesn't have us even reaching the general population by then? Sorry, did I confuse you with my shift in topics where at first you thought I was talking about weight loss and now you understand that I'm talking about the fact that we're still...

Just a friendly reminder to anybody hearing about how we're passed our peak of COVID-19 cases in MA: we also passed the peak back at the start of December when we had our peak of 4,647 cases per day for the week of Nov 29 and then started shrinking to reach 3,794 cases per day the week of Dec 20... then came Dec 27's average of 4,878 and Jan 3's average of 6,078 cases per day... yes, it looks like we may have passed the peak that came on Jan 3 but these things can change quickly, especially when you let your guard down as our Governor is pushing us to do. Weekly Average Progression: Mar 8    -     31.9 Mar 15  -   244.9 Mar 22  -   698.7 Mar 29  - 1183.1 Apr 5    - 1736.6 Apr 12  - 2176.9 (first peak) Apr 19  - 2119.1 Apr 26  - 1773.9 May 3   - 1407.7 May 10 - 1073.6 May 17 -   852.9 (Phase 1 of re-opening begins) May 24 through Sep 20 - weekly averages all below 500 Jun 7 through Au...

NPR's threshold for "red" risk level (their highest risk) is 25 cases per 100,000 people per day and their suggestion is that this indicates "uncontrolled community spread" (higher than "escalating community spread" which is yellow). A couple things about this... First, 45 of the 50 states in the US are in this category. Second, Massachusetts is at 86 cases per 100,000 people per day... so... yeah, that's a bit higher than the 25 cases that NPR uses as highest risk category trigger. Don't worry, Baker has this under control by doing [checks records] ah yes, basically nothing. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/01/816707182/map-tracking-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus-in-the-u-s

Mayor Walsh says that Boston's decision of what to change in response to the rise in COVID-19 cases in terms of what businesses can be open and under what conditions is not about closing businesses that are known for spreading COVID-19 and instead about simply trying to reduce the networks that are available.  This is indeed a good step but why aren't we looking at the numbers and having that weigh in on which businesses should be impacted?  Oh, right, because Child Care and K-12 Schools would be at the top of that list after Healthcare and places of residence like Long Term Care Facilities and we need both Child Care and K-12 Schools open because all businesses demand it. Meanwhile, Gov. Baker is pleading with people to (while maintaining that they should keep up risky behaviors related to businesses making money) not see friends and family over the holidays. Look, we're all tired and for a variety of reasons.  That doesn't mean we can allow ourselves to let our guard ...

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?!?

On August 1st, I wrote (among other things) "Baker suggests this is just because of a few parties where there was an explosion of cases. Give me a break. We let down our guard when the state told us it was ok to go back to work and to start going out to eat indoors and going to movie theaters and museums. Baker, you can't wish this away. You can't blame it away. Others have tried before you. Enough already. Face the fact that we re-opened too far too fast and we need to scale back. This all started with phase 2b based on the timing of cases so it's time to move back to 2a at least... or really try to get us back on track by scaling us all the way back to the start so we have a chance of driving down the case count. Keep in mind, It took us almost all of April and May to bring the cases down consistency below 1,000 per day the first time... how long do you think it'll take us this time with schools and colleges re-opening." I don't know what else to say but...

"COVID-19 cases are increasing in some communities throughout Massachusetts, this while the positive testing rate continues to be at its lowest" (news report this morning)... Yeah, it's almost like the testing rate doesn't identify how well we're doing when you increase the testing and/or change who is being tested

In approximately 6 months, about 2% of the USA population have caught COVID-19 and approximately 3% of those who have caught it have died... that's more than 63 times as many as died on 9/11 or about 5 times as many from each side in the entire American Revolution (including from disease), if you want something for comparison. Please stay safe today. Please do not hang out inside with others. Please wear masks at all times (yes, people can hear you through your mask). Please stay at least 6 feet away from each other (including outside). Don't forget that many small networks are as good at spreading disease as one large one.

Ok... the state re-introduced "probable" cases on 2-Sep... however... what I just noticed is that, though they've continued to report the new information (ie, how many total probables there are on the given day and how that has changed since the previous day), they do not give an updated list of probable cases per day in their underlying data sheets like they do with confirmed and deaths. The file is even listed as being for the 2nd of September. ~sigh~ Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay as informed as you're allowed to be?

First off, stop making silly mistakes. Your website now has the link to today's raw data in the space designated for the link for previously daily charts and nothing in the space designated for the link to today's raw data. Next up... and I don't blame you if you stop now because this is about to get a bit depressing... We've seen roughly 1 more person hospitalized than leaving the hospital per day since the change in definition of a COVID-19 hospitalization back in mid-July... if you think that's good, keep in mind that we've also averaged 13.6 people dying per day in that time (pretending for a moment that the number per day of recent days won't go up for a little while). There is good news though... we have very slimly reduce the average of people dying from 18 at the start of July to 14 the week of July 27 and 11.1 the week August 1. I suspect Aug 2 to be an anomaly since the average for the week of Aug 9 is already at 12.16 and we can expect that to ...

You know, it would make me feel much better about when we reduce the number of people in the ICU if it weren't always matched or exceeded by the number of people who died that day.... The last time more people left the ICU than people died from COVID-19 was July 18 (22 headcount reduction in ICU and 13 people died), before that was July 10 (11 headcount reduction and 10 deaths).... and those are the 2 days in July and August so far... that's it... every other day had more deaths than reduction in ICU headcount. Just sayin'. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay mathy.

We were decreasing the weekly average daily new cases by hundreds each week in May (1509 per day at the start of May, 1176 for the second week, 953 for the third, 580 for the fourth). Second week of June had 302 and then dipped to 238 for weeks, further dip to 222 for the week of June 28…. and then have increased by double digits every week since. We now have a week average for July 26 which is higher than any week since May 31 and that week's numbers can be expected to continue to increase for another few days. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay informed. Stay realistic about the simple fact that we are going in the wrong direction even before adding in in-person school and college students returning.

So, this morning, the news announced with glee that we only had 1 death yesterday from COVID-19. I went into an explanation of why this is misleading in a post earlier today but need to point out something about it now that I went back and looked at yesterday's report from the state: On July 6, the state changed the report so that the front page only shows the deaths among "confirmed cases" rather than the confirmed plus probable cases. Yesterday's report has 1 death reported in both the confirmed category and the probable category. The fact that the news is only reporting what is in the cover page is to be expected and just highlights a reason to be concerned with the obfuscation being performed by the state regarding our true situation. The glossy cover page that makes you feel good is not the true situation and the effort to make that glossy cover page look even better is .... disconcerting to say the least, though completely expected. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay in...