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

From time to time I give Boston's COVID site a bit of flack on Facebook because they show the cumulative count of cases per neighborhood as being from 2020 and 2021 despite our now closing out 2022.  But really, I greatly appreciate that they're as transparent as they are. For instance, today I took a look at their downloadable data and can tell you that since the end of May, Boston's 7-day average hospitalization rate hovered between 130 and 175 people per day... but never reached 175... until this week... and the average from Thursday is 199.28. This roughly mimics last year where the average hospitalization rate was even lower for most of the year and never got to 175 from the end of July through early December and then reached 196 on 12-Dec.  Oh, and their threshold for concern is 200 people per day.... so, not only are we mirroring last year's hospitalization rates but we're also on the cusp of reaching one of their thresholds for concern...   Don't worry t...

Today, with several days for the numbers to grow as the information comes in on testing performed last week, we already know that last week had a higher case count than the prior week.  With that said, I was reminded today that we always need to have perspective... so here comes a few points of comparison. At 2,922 cases per day or 42.4 cases per 100,000 people per day, last week is higher than any week going back to January of this year. We're already higher than the 2,340 cases  per dayor 33.9 cases per 100,000 people per day that we saw the last full week of November 2021, but we're a far cry from the case count the following week (which had the Thanksgiving bump and saw 4,401 cases per day or 63.9 cases per 100,000 people per day). Side note: we shouldn't expect to reach 4,401 cases per day next week given the lack of huge get-together holidays till the end of this month and in the case of that holiday, most events will be outside so hopefully the bump won't be as d...

"if not [removing the mask mandate] now, when?"... "How about when we get to levels that are on par with what we saw last summer, or roughly 1/10 of what we see today, so that spread continues to drop and we get out of the CDC's highest level of transmission before determine that we will no longer try to reduce further? How does that sound? Or maybe when we get the death rate down to single digits per day again? Even if we're not going to aim for 1 death per day perhaps we can aim lower than low double-digits per day (currently at about 40 per day but dropping)? How about we wait until cases per day fall to a much more reasonable count (right now we're at around 30 times what we were last summer and still in the ballpark of the first wave's peak... and that's without all cases being reported since home-testing isn't in those figures unless the person then goes and gets tested more formally)? How about when hospitals aren't still crowded a...

Remember when we used to want to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in MA?  Or how about those days when we at least pretended?  ~Sigh~ Reduction in cases has pretty much stopped now.  We had been reducing significantly in May but by the end of May were already seeing the drop-off in the reduction: Week - Avg Cases Per Day (Avg Cases Per Day Per 100,000 people) May 2-May 8     - 734.3 (10.7) May 9-May 15   - 499.1 ( 7.2) May 16-May 22 - 357.0 ( 5.2) May 23-May 29 - 197.1 ( 2.9) May 30-Jun 5     - 133.7 ( 1.9) Jun 6-Jun 12       -   96.9 ( 1.4) Jun 13-Jun 19     -   71.3 ( 1.0) Jun 20-Jun 26     -   64.4 ( 0.9) And so far, 2 of the 4 days being reported  from this week   are ALREADY higher than the same day last week.  I feel pretty confident that we'll see by mid-week next week that this week had more cases than last week did. Why is this such a big red flag?  Because we're still see...

MA is doing well comparatively to other states with our vaccination rate.  We're currently third, behind Vermont and just behind Maine (behind by 0.1%) With that said, we're only at 60.2% and the rate of at-least-one-dose is increasing at only 0.12% per day.  With our current at-least-one-dose being 69.7%, that means in about a month we'll be close to 70% fully vaccinated but it will take us another 85 days after that (at our current rate) to reach 80%. Of course, reaching 80% was always going to be hard as long as only 12+ year olds are eligible.  13% of our population is under 10 years old (I don't have the number of 10-11 year olds), which means we need nearly everybody else getting vaccinated to reach 80% until this fall when we're expecting to see additional children become eligible.  Given that we're really REALLY far from everybody else being vaccinated, it's not surprising we would be missing the mark so badly. The percentage of each age range that i...

So, as mentioned yesterday, it does appear that last week was third week straight of reduced cases per day... to put things in a bit more perspective, though, a year ago we went from 2,118 cases per day (note, this was not our peak) to 1072 cases per day in 3 weeks and the recent decrease is from 1,964 cases per day to 1,204.... and the number for last week is still increasing a bit. I also saw someone post today that they were excited because we were down to low single digits of people dying per day... alright, time to quickly point something out: DeathsReported (Report Date) is not how many people died on a day but instead is the difference between the reported total deaths the preceding day and the new reported total deaths... for a better understanding of where we are, you have to look at the DateofDeath data which is when the deaths occurred.  The DateofDeath data shows us that, while we did decrease week-over-week (at least by currently known deaths), it was by an insignifica...

(sorry for the foul language later but... well, to be sincere for a moment, if my language disturbs you more than the story it's painting, I don't want to know you) "PLEASE NOTE: Today's case numbers include 680 tested by one Massachusetts-based laboratory prior to December 1..." oh stop... just stop....  I don't care, I so very much don't care... but the fact that you care enough to have a full-page note for 3 lines of text about how today's reported cases includes 680 cases suggests to me that you are trying to distract from a few things.... hmmm, I wonder what those could be... Perhaps it's the case count from Monday which is already 3,804... last Thursday, the previous Monday's case count had been 1,967.  Today, that same Monday is sitting at 3,585.  This Monday is ALREADY the highest case count day of any bar none... Yes, last week's Monday's count nearly doubled in the week since last Thursday but this past Monday is ALREADY highe...

Well @#$%  That's all.  Have a good rest of the week. Ok, you know that's not all I've got to say so let's dig into it, shall we? Last week inches closer and closer to the April 26 threshold of 1774.7 average daily cases.  We now stand at 1714.4.  We may see last week go higher than the April 5 threshold of 1736.7, narrowing the Sun-Sat weeks that have seen higher cases (currently 4, likely 3 soon enough). Oh, and you know how we hadn't seen 1800+ cases on a single day from May 5 through the start of last week (or 1600+ if you start that time period just a few days later on May 8 but again, go until the start of last week)... Just 2 days later, with plenty of days of triple digit and double digit increases to come, Monday sites at 1853! Deaths for last week broke the average 20 per day threshold which we had been approaching but hadn't quite committed to over the last month.  That means we saw more deaths last week than any other week since Jun 21 (23.8 that wee...

Ok, well... last week's cases keep climbing and we now see... There is no weekday that saw fewer than 1848 cases...for comparison, There was no day from May 21 through October 18 that saw more than 1,000 cases There was no day from May 5 through the start of last week that saw 1848 cases Wednesday and Thursday currently sit at 2119 and 2291 cases respectively.  To get close to these number, you have to go back to April 29 which has 2187.  To get close to 2291, that's going back to April 24 with 2277 or April 23 with 2406. The average case count is now at 1620.3.  I realized today that I've been counting back toward April and have to ask, why am I not counting forward from when we closed down originally... or counting the number of weeks/days that reached the current average? We closed on March 17....  we had 31.8 cases the preceding week March 17 itself saw 249 cases reaching 1620.3? Sunday-to-Saturday averages only have 4 weeks greater than 1620.3... those start Apr...

Yesterday's prediction for today has come true and boy howdy has it. (prepare for a bit of a rant that's full of numbers) We now have 3 days last week above 1,000 new cases, 1 day with 963 and 1 with 847.  Between May 27 and Oct 13 there is exactly 1 day that reached 847. There were 3 such days the week before last, so, you know, the lowest day last week is pretty damn high. Between May 22 through to a week ago yesterday, there were 0 days that reached 963. To find a day that reached 1044, you have to go back to May 19. Thursday now has 1183 cases. Let me say this again, there have been 0 days from May 22 through to the start of last week that reached 963, not a single one and last Thursday's known case count, which we can expect to increase by double-digits still tomorrow, is now known to be 1183. The average for last week (and there are still several days before this stops growing) is now at 831. To reach that average, you have to go back to the week of May 17, which is n...