Covid by Dave

Interesting situation with Colorado. Their cases have stayed persistently high, but their hospitalizations and deaths are dropping steadily. Strange.

California has done a relatively good job of lowering their case numbers. They went from over 250,000 new cases in July to just over 100,000 in September. Deaths are still staying high though.

Now turning to a state that's having some real issues. Arkansas has had persistently high case numbers for the past three months, and their hospitalizations have been high for those three months too. The worst part is that their deaths are going through the roof.

If you want to see an example of a state that took a Covid situation that was completely out of control and brought it to heel, I present to you, Arizona. They were totally screwed back in June and July, with 150,000 cases over those two months. They hit 10,000 new hospitalization in August. But now, cases have dropped down from 95,000 a month to 16,000 a month and hospitalizations dropped from 10,000 to 700. That's quite the turnaround. Nice work AZ.

Continuing in my series of state Covid reports, I present to you, Alaska.

Now that it's the end of the month and the data is in, I'm going to be doing a national survey of Cases, Hospitalizations and Deaths across all 50 states plus DC and PR. I did this the past two months and I think it gives a good oversight on the situation in the various states. To begin, I present to you, Alabama.

Re-did the Mass Mortality Rate graph to make it more understandable. Mortality rate was 7.6% for the first 109,000 cases, but it's been declining since then.

Mass Covid 19 update. More crappy news to report today. Cases ticked up, to 510, and they only did 14,404 tests today, so the Positive Test Rate shot up to 3.5%. Ouch. Deaths shot up too, to 32. Total Confirmed Cases: 129,753 Total Confirmed Deaths: 9,242 Some good news on the hospital front. Six people got out of the hospital today and eighteen people got out of the ICU, so that brings those numbers down to 438 and 89, respectively. Not liking this week at all. Hopefully things will start to turn around soon.

Since I did a national mortality rate study I figured I'd do one for just Massachusetts. Our's hasn't budged much since the beginning if you look at it in the aggregate. Peaked at 7.6% and it's only dropped to 7.1% at this point. If you break it up though, then it starts to look different, and shows that the mortality rate is actually declining for the new cases that are coming in now.

Did a little analysis of the US Covid Mortality Rate over time. Apparently the treatment protocols have gotten MUCH better, so much so that you have a one third as much chance of dying if you get the disease now compared to if you got it during the time that the first hundred thousand people were dying. The first hundred thousand deaths were caused by 1.7 million cases. The next hundred thousand deaths were caused by 5.4 million cases. That's exactly three times as many. In the beginning, the national mortality rate was in excess of five percent. It's under three percent now. Shout out to all the doctors and clinicians who's extremely hard work has led to this improvement in outcomes for those hit with the virus.

Updated the Mass Covid Cases graph and things are not looking good. We were bouncing around between 2,000 and 2,500 cases a week for the past eight weeks. Some increases but mostly steady. This past week, however, cases jumped up to nearly 3,500. Not good.

Did a chart showing the various Covid Mortality Rates amoungst the various states. CT and NJ are both at 8%. Mass is at 7.3%. Maryland is at 6.1%, and then it drops down from there. Seventeen states have higher mortality than the national average, which is about 2.9% right now. Six states have a mortality rate at or below 1%. Utah is the biggest state with a super low mortality rate. They got 66,000 cases and only 444 deaths, which works out to 0.7%. It's unusual that the states with some of the best healthcare facilities in the world, namely New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maryland, have the highest mortality rates when places without much heathcare infrastructure, like South Dakota, are coming in at 1%.

Mass Covid 19 update. Pretty horrible news to report today, especially on the hospitalization front. Cases ticked up, to 450, and they did 14,124 tests, so the Positive Test Rate ticked back up to 3.2%. Deaths ticked down, which is the only bright spot on the day, to eight. Total Confirmed Cases: 129,243 Total Confirmed Deaths: 9,210 Twenty six more people went into the hospital today and twenty two more went into the ICU. This shoots those numbers up to 444 and 107, respectively. This is very bad. We haven't had ICU cases over 100 since June. You got to go back to July the last time we had this many people in the hospital. Hospitalizations are bad. About half the people who are hospitalized for Covid wind up dying from it. Grim stuff.

Interesting graphic put out by Johns Hopkins. Shows which states are having trouble in a quick easy presentation. Interesting that formerly crazy hotspots like Texas, Florida, Arizona and Georgia seem to be doing well now according to this. You can tell at a glance where the Sturgis rally was. Lol.

Seeings as I was in the neighborhood of California, I decided to go next door and check out how Nevada was doing. They seem to be well past their peak despite recent upticks.

Did a review for California to see how they are doing. They had a really bad spike back in June, but they seem to have gotten things a bit more under control and have declining cases and deaths at this point.

Just heard on Rachel Maddow that Wisconsin is the new epicenter and has the fastest rise in cases. So I did a chart to see what the situation is, and it does indeed seem dire. Their deaths aren't peaking but probably will soon follow the rapid rise in cases and hospitalizations.

Mass Covid 19 update. More relatively crappy news to report today, but not as bad as yesterday. Cases dropped down, to 367, and they did 13.049 tests, so the Positive Test Rate dipped a little, to 2.8%. Still too high, but at least it's lower than yesterday and the day before. Deaths dropped down a little too, to eleven. Deaths seem to be the only thing we're consistently staying low on. Over the past 88 days we've averaged just under 15 deaths a day. The past nine days we averaged 13. Hoping that moves to single digits soon. Total Confirmed Cases: 128,793 Total Confirmed Deaths: 9,202 Ten more people went into the hospital today, and six more went into the ICU, so those numbers shot up to 418 and 85, respectively. This is not a good trend.

Considering that I found that Montana was having a big spike this week, I decided to take a look at their neighbor, Idaho. They seem to be having a big spike this week too.

I did an analysis of the recent cases in Massachusetts and you can see that our situation has steadily gotten worse since early July. We had a five week stretch where we dipped down to between a thousand and twelve hundred cases a week, but last week it was almost at 2,700. That's more than double. Ouch.

Given that the anti-mask Governor of Missouri just tested positive for Covid, I figured I'd do a graph on Missouri and see how they were doing. Turns out being anti-mask is bad for your state. Their cases have been rising steadily and this past week they just had a huge spike in deaths.  

Mass is definitely trending in the wrong direction with its Covid situation. This past 16 days, we averaged 416 cases a day. The 16 days before that, we averaged 333 cases a day. The 16 days before that, we averaged 257 cases a day. This is the wrong direction.

Mass Covid 19 update. Really crappy news to report today, sadly. Cases shot up again, to 595, which is the most we've had since June. They did 18,065 tests, so the Positive Test Rate stayed elevated at 3.3%. Deaths dipped down a little, to thirteen. Total Confirmed Cases: 128,426 Total Confirmed Deaths: 9,191 Current state mortality rate: 7.1% Fifty four people went into the hospital today, which sucks. Two more went into the ICU. That brings those numbers up to 408 and 79, respectively. You have to go back to July to get to when we had over 400 people in the hospital, so things are not doing well.

Living in Holyoke, with a Puerto Rican as a housemate, the situation on the island is of particular relevance to me. I'd heard they were having a hard time, so I did a chart to show the situation. Indeed, they have experienced a significant increase in both cases and deaths over the past thirteen weeks. Hope they can get a handle on that.

Mass Covid 19 update. Pretty grim news to report today. Cases ticked back up, to 515, and they only did 14,310 tests, so the Positive Test Rate skyrocketed up to 3.6%, which is higher than it's been in months. Ouch. That totally sucks. Deaths ticked up too, to eighteen. Total Confirmed Cases: 127,832 Total Confirmed Deaths: 9,178 In the only bit of good news today, thirty five people got out of the hospital, which is a nice reversal of previous trends. Seven out of the last nine days we've had people going into the hospital instead of getting out of it, and this is bad. Half the people who go into the hospital for Covid don't come out alive, so keeping people out of the hospital is key. One person got out of the ICU today too. That brings the Hospitalization and ICU numbers to 354 and 77, respectively. Hope we're not going to a bad place. The high PTR bums me out.

Since I just did South Carolina I figured I'd do North Carolina too, and they've got some issues. After their big surge they fell back, but not by much. Eight out of the last fifteen weeks they've had more than 10,000 cases per week, and all the other weeks were over 8,000 cases a week. Their deaths are staying stubbornly high too.

South Carolina was having serious problems a couple months ago, when they had five weeks in a row with over 10,000 cases a week. They seem to have turned it around a bit, but in the last two weeks have hit another uptick in cases.

I heard a rumor that Montana was having some problems, so I decided to see for myself. Seems the rumor was right. They are shooting up dramatically in just the last week. Big spikes.

Did a graph for Arkansas, and they're having some issues.

Did a review of CovidTracking.com 's ethnic case and death data, and put together a spreadsheet that shows the net effects in each state of belonging to a given ethnic group. Data is really all over the place. In only eight states did blacks suffer more than 10% greater cases than their representation in the population, but in fourteen states they suffered deaths more than 10% in excess of what their population percentages would have suggested. Hispanics had only three states where their deaths were over 10% more than their representation in the population, but 26 states where they had more than 10% greater caseload than would have been expected. I had to break up the spreadsheet into four chunks.

Mass Covid 19 update. Pretty lousy news to report today. Cases stayed about the same, at 454, but they only did 15,854 tests, so the Positive Test Rate shot way up to 2.9%. This is not good. Deaths dropped down a little, to ten. Total Confirmed Cases: 127,317 Total Confirmed Deaths: 9,160 Fourteen more people went into the hospital today, and three more went into the ICU. That brings those numbers up to 389 and 78, respectively. Nasty day today all around. Hope the news starts getting better. We were doing so well but there has been some backsliding.

Well sometimes the facts just jump out on you from right off the page. Trump held a maskless Covid spreader event in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 20th. Since then the situation in Oklahoma has been going from bad to worse. And it clearly was precipitated by the mass gathering held in defiance of CDC guidelines. Nice work asshole. There were 366 people dead from Covid in Oklahoma before the rally, almost twice as many have died since then. Plus Herman Cain.

I heard Nebraska was having issues so I did a chart to see the situation. They have definitely had an uptick in cases and deaths recently.

I heard Utah was having some trouble, and it seems like they are. Last two weeks has seen a big increase in cases. And the hospitalizations spiked last week too. We will have to keep a close eye on this one.

Continuing on along the southern Gulf coast, I did a chart for Mississippi, which did have some real problems a while back. Seems like they've made great strides since then.  

Another place that had a lot of problems is Georgia. Seems like they're doing better, but they are still dealing with 10,000 cases and 300 deaths a week. This is down from 25,000 cases and 500 deaths a week, but it's still pretty bad.

Another place that's had a lot of issues is Alabama. They have reduced their caseload since their peak but they're still dealing with over 6,000 cases a week. Mass has 2k - 2.5k.

  Did a chart for Iowa, cause I heard they were having an increase in cases, and sure enough, they are.

Last we checked in on Arizona, they were in the middle of a really awful outbreak, with cases and hospitalizations and deaths skyrocketing. Fortunately for them, and the rest of us, they've seemingly gotten things under control, especially compared to before.

Mass Covid 19 update. More pretty crappy news today. Cases dipped down a little, to 455, but they only did 18,556 tests, so the Positive Test Rate stayed up at 2.5%. Deaths dipped a little, to fifteen. Total Confirmed Cases: 126,863 Total Confirmed Deaths: 9,150 Fourteen more people went into the hospital today, and four more went into the ICU. That raises those numbers to 375 and 75, respectively. Another grim day in the pandemic. Hope tomorrow brings better news.

Did a study where I combined all the New England states so I could get a regional view of the overall Covid situation. Deaths and hospitalizations especially have dropped off quite a bit, which is excellent.