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

See that little uptick at the end of each graph? This didn't happen in 2022 but did in 2023. We understood the goal in 2022 (to some degree) but since ... is there some portion of the population who says "covid spread must be down so let's go nuts"? I suspect this is partially colleges reconvening their students on campuses where in 2022 they were still trying to get their students to maintain some precautions and they haven't been since... but I also don't think this is just college campuses.

Latest wastewater numbers from Biobot indicate that covid spread in MA continues to be basically a vertical line going up and reaching higher than it has been since January 22, 2022 (yes, 2 years ago). Why is this exactly as expected? Because as we continue to proclaim that all is fine, people will act as if it is and the annual surge in cases during the winter will increase accordingly. The 7-day average from 27-Dec-2023 suggests a spread level of 280 cases per 100,000 people per day (for comparison, original highest threshold level was 8 cases per 100,000 people per day, which was then relaxed a couple times to try to avoid shutting down every school and business and landed on 25 cases per 100,000 people per day.... so 280 is .... not great)

Most recent Middlesex, MA covid tracking shows just over 2,000 copies per mL, suggesting we were seeing roughly 270 cases per 100,000 people per day (friendly reminder that the red flag for us was initially set to 8 cases per 100,000 people per day, then relaxed to 16, and then to 25 as we tried to avoid closing all schools all the time... so we're over 10 times the most relaxed threshold).

Not that it wasn't already apparent but covid spread is definitely on the rise in MA, and in particular in Middlesex country. The latest update from BioBot is that Middlesex had 1,636 copies per mL (roughly equivalent to 218 cases per day per 100,000 people, where 8 cases per day per 100,000 people was the original highest threshold, which was later relaxed to 16 to make doing nothing seem more reasonable). Nationwide spread hasn't been at 1,636 since the start of 2022 (no, not since last winter's wave, since the winter wave before that) Admittedly, MA saw that rate at its crest in the winter of 2022-2023 but limited to Dec 23-Jan 8. https://biobotstg.wpengine.com/data/covid-19#county-25017

Covid spread continues to rise in MA with wastewater tracking showing rates we haven't seen since January. Current tracking shows the spread is greater than 120 cases per 100,000 people per day (original highest threshold was 8 cases per 100,000 people per day).  Please do what you can to limit your risks to yourself and to others you see, whether they're friends and family you're visiting or random people at the grocery store.   Every contact is a chance to cause someone to have a debilitating side effect for the rest of their lives (in addition to giving them a 10% greater chance of heart attack for a year). You can limit that chance in many ways, but the best ways are to limit your own exposures and to wear a mask.

Dear Middlesex County, MA, flattening the curve is not meant to be flattening it to be a nearly vertical line going up... For those wondering, the latest reading is 1483 copies per mL.... which is indicative of roughly 200 cases per 100,000 people per day (and keep in mind that the original identification of high spread was 8 cases per 100,000 people per day, which was then relaxed to 16... so... 200 is...) Also, last week we were at 982 copies per mL, so, yeah, the increase is dramatic. For additional comparison, the peak last winter in MA generally was 2023 copies per mL... that was in the first week of January 2023.

Latest MA wastewater tracking shows that we have, not surprisingly, seen the increase in spread continue after Thanksgiving and now have an amount of shedded virus that we would expect if we were having about 96-112 cases per 100,000 per day... that's... a lot... I used to be super alarmed when any single city/town reached that level. It's also a higher level of spread than any other time since around Feb 2023 (other than a couple of weeks earlier this fall).   Please take any precautions you're able to.

Continuing to see somewhat high COVID-19 spread in MA but maybe we had stopped the increase prior to Barbenheimer opening weekend?

Ok, so, Southern MA doesn't appear to have been quite as bad the curve as we may have thought it was based on 2 samples... it's still unfortunate that we get only 3 readings per week given that, if one of them is an abnormality it throws off our understanding of the situation on the ground much more drastically and this is really the only way we know what's happening with the spread anymore. Throwing in a couple comparison time points: 2020 for the first wave 2021 saw our lowest spread where we actually had a couple days when nobody died from COVID and had gotten down to single-cases per 100,000 people per day for a few days. And then there's the last month. We're not quite as bad as we were at the peak of the first wave but we're still depressingly far from what we accomplished in the past.

Yesterday, it seemed like we might be heading in the right direction in MA in terms of COVID spread... today... not so much. A reminder that about 125-150 copies/mL is roughly equivalent to 16 cases per 100,000 people per day which is the threshold to the highest category for level of spread that we have (not nearly the highest amount of spread but it was considered "red" and whatnot)... this is one of the problems with sporadic data points, it makes getting the true sense a little harder because you have natural fluctuations from day to day and when you don't see the day-to-day fluctuations, you don't know if what you're seeing is an outlier or the trend...

Quick MA COVID update: We've doubled our spread in the last 2 weeks... we're now roughly at 32 cases per 100k people per day equivalency based on wastewater tracking and higher than we've been since May. Remdiner: 16 cases per 100k people per day is the threshold to highest category of spread.

MA COVID-19 update: Well, that was short lived... based on the most recent data from wastewater in MA, we're back to 16 cases per 100,000 or slightly more... we were potentially under that threshold for just 1 week.

The tracking suggests that mid-May have been the low for this trough in spread but only time will tell. What we do know is that we've doubled the spread in the southern region and increased by 10% in the northern region. If that was our low, we didn't reach our low from March 2022 and our low was still roughly 10 times higher than we had reached in mid-Jun 2021. Assuming 125-150 copies/mL equates to the entry to high-risk of 16 cases per 100k people per day, we got as low as 129 and 156 in the southern and northern regions respectively so neither region got out of the high-risk zone. This time in 2022, we were just starting to reduce spread from a wave in May and that reduction would continue through June before we would start to see spread climb again. Will we skip the June reduction this time around? The pandemic isn't over. Keep taking precautions. Keep protecting your friends, neighbors, and loved ones from you potentially spreading to them without knowing you...

Wastewater tracking of COVID-19 in MA shows the southern region's 7-day average at 129 copies per mL and northern region at 156. If we assume 125-150 is roughly the equivalent of 16 cases per 100k people per day (the threshold for concern after those thresholds were relaxed a bit... 8 cases per 100k being the original threshold), while we're lower than we've been since April 2022... we're still at a concerning spread lead, still higher than we were in early March 2022 and still roughly 10 times as high as we were in mid-Jun 2021. The pandemic isn't over. Keep taking precautions. Keep protecting your friends, neighbors, and loved ones from you potentially spreading to them without knowing you're infected. And if you're not concerned about being one of those that are hospitalized or dead, think about the potential lifelong detriments to your health and capabilities that can come with Long Covid regardless of how severe your COVID-19 symptoms.