The Coronavirus thread

[KJHburg]

Mecklenburg County hospitalizations are going down which is a great trend.

[videtur quam contuor]

delete

Edited May 9, 2020 by tarhoosier

[kermit]

Change in infections in Georgia at the Census block group scale (first diagnosed infection in February through April 14). Georgia DHS releases Corona virus data at an unusually high level of detail — these same scale data are not available in NC.

This map shows the danger of assuming this disease is primarily a risk for residents of high density areas. In the active cases map you can see infection rates declining rapidly in Atlanta while increasing in much smaller towns (like the Gainesville hotspot which emerged at the end of the time period).   Georgia saw the rural case trend first, but newer datasets are showing the same expansion of rural hotspots in other states. 
Map by Jerry Shannon @ UGA 

 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by kermit

[Temeteron]

6 hours ago, kermit said:

Change in infections in Georgia at the Census block group scale (first diagnosed infection in February through April 14). Georgia DHS releases Corona virus data at an unusually high level of detail — these same scale data are not available in NC.

This map shows the danger of assuming this disease is primarily a risk for residents of high density areas. In the active cases map you can see infection rates declining rapidly in Atlanta while increasing in much smaller towns (like the Gainesville hotspot which emerged at the end of the time period).   Georgia saw the rural case trend first, but newer datasets are showing the same expansion of rural hotspots in other states. 
Map by Jerry Shannon @ UGA 

 

 

Seems like the Columbus area was hit hard 

[navigator319]

Stories like this need to be told.  Don't just read the headline the facts are stunning and much more wide reaching then the current situation.

http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/BB13Qqsv?ocid=scu2

[KJHburg]

81 year old Charlotte mother home about 2 month bout with Corvid 19    Happy Mother's Day to this mother and all the mothers out there.

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/best-mothers-day-ever-81-year-old-returns-home-after-2-month-fight-with-covid-19/NR6M6XQEO5C2LA7D7CFVZLYMIA/

 

[KJHburg]

Since Georgia is mentioned above here are the trends in the Peach State and they are looking good.  Going down in several fronts

number of new cases in the last 2 weeks

deaths reported each day going down the last 2 weeks   from the Georgia Dept of Health 

https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

Will be in Savannah later in the month and the ATL soon thereafter 

[eastsider]

I would say things in Georgia look the opposite of good... but hey what ever, enjoy your vacation.

https://www.ajc.com/news/coronavirus-georgia-covid-dashboard/IjORDGLckdP3RI9hJU5CWO/

 

 

[videtur quam contuor]

I am waiting for Trump or Pence to visit a covid ward of a hospital. Yeah, yeah, I know, mask, face shield, gown, gloves. If care workers can do it then it would be a stupendous message to everyone that they are in it to win it.

[Crucial_Infra]

51 minutes ago, tarhoosier said:

I am waiting for Trump or Pence to visit a covid ward of a hospital.

No more dangerous than the west wing. 

[KJHburg]

from Twitter and Meck county today

Mecklenburg County

New data on COVID-19 cases through 5/10 is available » https://meck.co/3cvOQx2 • The average number of COVID-19 hospitalizations has decreased over the last 14 days • An average of 7% of tested individuals were positive for COVID-19, a slight decrease over the last 14 days

 

[Crucial_Infra]

IHME revised numbers upward again to 147,000 deaths by August. Also, projects >4,000 deaths in North Carolina now??? 

[navigator319]

6 hours ago, Crucial_Infra said:

IHME revised numbers upward again to 147,000 deaths by August. Also, projects >4,000 deaths in North Carolina now??? 

These are pointless.  I don't understand why we all and especially the medium keep harping on these.  Unless you work in hospital planning capacity these numbers are meaningless. 

The virus is here to stay FOREVER.  Of course there will be 147k/4k deaths just a matter of when July, Aug, Nov, Feb

[nicholas]

WRAL notes that we have added over 1,000 confirmed cases in the past two days (up to 16,600+), but the percentage of positive tests has slowly but steadily been declining since mid-April (currently it is around 7.5%), and the number of hospitalizations has remained pretty flat at around 520 over the past couple of weeks.

[eastsider]

On 5/10/2020 at 9:39 PM, KJHburg said:

Since Georgia is mentioned above here are the trends in the Peach State and they are looking good.  Going down in several fronts

number of new cases in the last 2 weeks

deaths reported each day going down the last 2 weeks   from the Georgia Dept of Health 

https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

Will be in Savannah later in the month and the ATL soon thereafter 

Turns out the Georgia Dept. of Public Health rearranged dates of their graph to make it appear the cases of coronavirus were on the decline 

Quote

From left to right, the graph begins on April 28, goes back in time to April 27, then jumps two days ahead to April 29. This date-hopping continues down the horizontal X-axis. What's more, the colored bars — with each color representing a county — are arranged in different orders for each date

The graph seems to bend both time and place to achieve a clean descending-staircase effect.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/graph-shows-georgia-bungling-coronavirus-data-2020-5

[kermit]

Hot spot heat maps for the past three weeks. These are made by a friend of mine, so they are presented for entertainment only (meaning I can't answer specific questions about the maps). Keep in mind they are mapping the change in cases and the heat map shows change relative to surroundings.

I Had no idea about the Sparta-Mouth of Wilson area

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by kermit

[nicholas]

Per WRAL, confirmed cases have shot up to just under 19,500 currently.  However, they noted that this is due to an increased number of recent tests (they did about 30,000 tests over the past weekend), and that both the rate of positive tests and hospitalizations has remained pretty steady at around 7% and 510, respectively.

Gov Cooper noted in a press conference yesterday that he is hopeful we can move into Phase II this coming weekend, as long as current trends hold steady.

[DMann]

We should do what Donnie wants and stop testing, that way the confirmed cases will go down@!@!@!

[kermit]

1 hour ago, DMann said:

We should do what Donnie wants and stop testing, that way the confirmed cases will go down@!@!@!

or what they are doing in Florida and Georgia which are doctoring the numbers rather than doctoring the people.

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/05/18/censorship-covid-19-data-researcher-removed-florida-moves-re-open-state/5212398002/

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/just-cuckoo-state-latest-data-mishap-causes-critics-cry-foul/182PpUvUX9XEF8vO11NVGO/

We need to be talking about the quality of our data before we make decisions based on it  (not really pointed at NC specifically)

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by kermit

[U_R_]

1 hour ago, kermit said:

or what they are doing in Florida and Georgia which is doctoring the numbers rather than doctoring the people.

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/05/18/censorship-covid-19-data-researcher-removed-florida-moves-re-open-state/5212398002/

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/just-cuckoo-state-latest-data-mishap-causes-critics-cry-foul/182PpUvUX9XEF8vO11NVGO/

We need to be talking about the quality of our data before we make decisions based on it  (not really pointed at NC specifically)

 

 

This whole graph thing in GA has been massively overblown imho. This article does a good job explaining it. The graph that was out of whack only showed the top 5 counties for coronavirus cases, so the graph itself was not even that important. Meanwhile, GA has increased its testing and now ranks 21st in the US for tests/1k people while states likes North Carolina and South Carolina are in the 40s. Our cases in GA have been steady/slightly decreasing which is different than the large spike many people were expecting. 

https://mobile.twitter.com/kelleykphoto/status/1262701861724917761

Tests/1k People

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/covid-19-testing/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel={"colId":"Share of Tests with Positive COVID-19 Results","sort":"desc"}

 

 

[KJHburg]

Per capita cases per state map updated daily.

https://us-covid19-per-capita.net/

[kermit]

On 5/19/2020 at 3:39 PM, Ric0_0 said:

This whole graph thing in GA has been massively overblown imho. This article does a good job explaining it. The graph that was out of whack only showed the top 5 counties for coronavirus cases, so the graph itself was not even that important. Meanwhile, GA has increased its testing and now ranks 21st in the US for tests/1k people while states likes North Carolina and South Carolina are in the 40s. Our cases in GA have been steady/slightly decreasing which is different than the large spike many people were expecting. 

https://mobile.twitter.com/kelleykphoto/status/1262701861724917761

Tests/1k People

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/covid-19-testing/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel={"colId":"Share of Tests with Positive COVID-19 Results","sort":"desc"}

It might have been a legit accident (and thanks for the blog post discussing that possibility). Accidental or not, reporting data on COVID infections has become political. The public needs to be aware of issues with the data we are using including testing requirements, cause of death attributions, location issues and reporting obligations and the complete absence of federal standards for reporting and testing.  The best case scenario is that we have 50 different states reporting data honestly, but slightly differently (some states report nursing home deaths, some do not, some results are delayed by 14! Days, etc.), since the data are inconsistent we can't make informed judgements about the risk of reopening.  We also need to be realistic and accept that political motivations are going to cause some agencies involved in data reporting to put their thumbs on the scale -- something that is going to make public health even more difficult (that was a euphemism for more "people dying needlessly").

This situation is such a mess (euphemism for "incompetently managed") that we still have no idea what current infection rates are anywhere in the country -- we are still only testing people who think they have it (but it is a partially asymptomatic disease!). Total infection rates are the fundamental piece of information we need to reopen safely -- without reliable data thousands of people will die needlessly. WTF has the federal government been doing since January? It certainly wasn't stocking up PPE, or nasal swabs, or developing reliable tests or setting up contact tracing. The federal government totally wasted 5+ months for absolutely no reason other than gross incompetence and/or political and personal gain. Think about what that garden-variety incompetence means --  a 100,000 Americans are dead, we have the highest unemployment since the depression and American's have effectively had a half year (so far) of their lives taken away simply because the federal government did not want to listen to experts already on its payroll. The examples of effective mitigation strategies in Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Austrailia and New Zealand (among others) show us that we did not need to go though this disaster.   All this death and economic calamity was because the federal government was incompetent, or worse, busy profiting from this  (as both Dick Burr, fired inspector generals and hydroxychloroquine.illustrate)

(yes, I am very (very) angry that I live in a nation being led by self-interested morons. I apologize for contaminating the thread with something that unintentionally blossomed into a political rant, but this seems like a pretty big deal)

Edited May 21, 2020 by kermit

[videtur quam contuor]

Good, easy to understand graphics here. From the Financial Times. Free to read. Excess deaths is a key component of the pandemic in my opinion.

https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441

[Dale]

18 hours ago, kermit said:

It might have been a legit accident (and thanks for the blog post discussing that possibility). Accidental or not, reporting data on COVID infections has become political. The public needs to be aware of issues with the data we are using including testing requirements, cause of death attributions, location issues and reporting obligations and the complete absence of federal standards for reporting and testing.  The best case scenario is that we have 50 different states reporting data honestly, but slightly differently (some states report nursing home deaths, some do not), since the data are inconsistent we can't make informed judgements about the risk of reopening.  We also need to be realistic and accept that political motivations are going to cause some agencies involved in data reporting to put their thumbs on the scale -- something that is going to make public health even more difficult (that was a euphemism for more "people dying needlessly").

This situation is such a mess (euphemism for "incompetently managed") that we still have no idea what current infection rates are anywhere in the country -- we are still only testing people who think they have it (but it is a partially asymptomatic disease!). Total infection rates are the fundamental piece of information we need to reopen safely -- without reliable data thousands of people will die needlessly. WTF has the federal government been doing since January? It certainly wasn't stocking up PPE, or nasal swabs, or developing reliable tests or setting up contact tracing. The federal government totally wasted 5+ months for absolutely no reason other than gross incompetence and/or political and personal gain. Think about what that garden-variety incompetence means --  a 100,000 Americans are dead, we have the highest unemployment since the depression and American's have effectively had a half year (so far) of their lives taken away simply because the federal government did not want to listen to experts already on its payroll. The examples of effective mitigation strategies in Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Austrailia and New Zealand (among others) show us that we did not need to go though this disaster.   All this death and economic calamity was because the federal government was incompetent, or worse, busy profiting from this  (as both Dick Burr, fired inspector generals and hydroxychloroquine.illustrate)

(yes, I am very (very) angry that I live in a nation being led by self-interested morons. I apologize for contaminating the thread with something that unintentionally blossomed into a political rant, but this seems like a pretty big deal)

Had we done nothing, I mean NOTHING, each American might have lost 2 to 5 days of life, on average, would still have their jobs and 401k’s and not beholden to the modern day equivalent of duck-and-cover drills. That would have put people like me 2 to 5 days closer to heaven with Pandemians losing just 2 to 5 days of knowing what’s best for others. Of your ‘success stories’, Germany is likely to pay a heavy price for its lockdowns. Oh, and Brave New World: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/08/health/germany-south-korea-easing-coronavirus-measures-intl/index.html

[tozmervo]

1 hour ago, Dale said:

Had we done nothing, I mean NOTHING, each American might have lost 2 to 5 days of life, on average, would still have their jobs and 401k’s and not beholden to the modern day equivalent of duck-and-cover drills. That would have put people like me 2 to 5 days closer to heaven with Pandemians losing just 2 to 5 days of knowing what’s best for others. Of your ‘success stories’, Germany is likely to pay a heavy price for its lockdowns. Oh, and Brave New World: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/08/health/germany-south-korea-easing-coronavirus-measures-intl/index.html

That is the most obscene thing I've ever read on Urban Planet. Averaging out a human life over a total population to downplay the destructive toll the virus has had on families and communities across the country? That is vile.