The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: health care Page 19 of 35

April 17th US Covid Data

Our benefactor notes that the long tail looks like it will take a long time. (More on that in another post.)


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US Covid April 16th Data

Our benefactor writes:

Fixed the three-day averages of deaths, due to the sharp observations of a reader. We might be in for a long tail after the flattening, with the number of deaths significantly higher, an increase of 4,920, of which more than 3,000 came from NY. I double- and triple-checked these numbers. This is not good news. (Ian — New York Added in the deaths from people taken out of their houses, so that jump is due to counting previously uncounted deaths. The huge jump in deaths and three-day averages today is in part an artifact of these deaths being added in one lump, rather than being backfitted.)

The biggest percent increases in cases have come from:
South Dakota (18 percent), Arkansas, Florida, Rhode Island, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and D.C.

The comparisons to the NY Times ultimately revealed that my three-day averages were inaccurate. The NY Times’ daily increases are aligned with Johns Hopkins data.


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US Covid April 15th Data

Our benefactor writes:

So, a friend of mine forwarded this link to a NY Times reporting tool. If you scroll down, you see the graph below. I was really puzzled by it, because the number of daily deaths is far below what I am getting from Johns Hopkins. The NY Times appears to be collecting their own data in-house and are seriously under-counting. Ironically, at the top of the article they write, “More than 25,000 people with the coronavirus have now died in the United States, according to a New York Times database. Since early April, that death toll has been growing by more than 1,000 each day.” The total count is correct, but the daily rate is totally off. They would never reach that number without a much larger daily rate.
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Here is the three-day average from my data, which is taken by state and summed from Johns Hopkins CSSE data. We have not had a single day less than 2,000 cases in the last week. The data are pointing to a worsening of outcomes perhaps due to the increases coming from southern and mid-western states that are not as restrictive about quarantining, combined with expected lags in deaths as compared to new cases.

Note: As a commenter pointed out, the three-day averages for deaths were wrong. They’ve been corrected. My apologies. (Ian)


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The Next Problem Will Be Food

Alright, back in February I warned people to get ready to shelter in place.

Now I’m telling you to be concerned about food price increases and even shortages. As Vinay Gupta points out, the signs of future problems are visible now. We have a ton of food rotting in fields, we have farmers without migrant workers, we have packing plants shutting down and so on. In India we have migrant workers sent home, etc.

In the short run, this might lead to lower prices (if they make it to consumers), but in the long run this may lead to higher food prices, at the most it may lead to shortages in some places. It will lead to hunger among those who cannot afford the price increases.

Some countries will be particularly vulnerable, for example India.

So, stock up if you can. Simple stuff: rice, beans, canned goods, and so on. It’s highly unlikely, unless you have an ongoing issue already, that water will be a problem, so: food and medicine. This isn’t a “right now” issue, this is not for months–just buy a little extra when you go to the supermarket.

If it turns out you don’t need it, having some bags of rice and beans won’t do you any harm. If you do need it…

Actual functioning governments would be prioritizing things like keeping the food supply chain going: subsidize farm worker wages, and arrange protection for them, among other things. Instead, we are printing trillions of dollars and giving them to rich people to burn uselessly.

More on that later.


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April 12th US Covid Data

From our benefactor. Remember again that these numbers will be understated. That said, the curve continues to flatten, good news.


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April 11th US Covid Data

The chart has been changed a bit to allow it to fit cleanly. Bars every two days and a stacked graph.

In terms of accuracy, from April 1st to 5th, New York pulled 1,125 dead people out of houses. That is eight times more than normal, so we can assume that 984 are people who wouldn’t have died without the pandemic (which doesn’t mean they all died from Covid-19.)

The official death rate for those five days was 2,223, so the undercount was about 40 percent.

We can assume that many bodies of people who live alone, or couples who died at about the same time (remember that towards the end of Covid-19 you can’t move) remain to be discovered.

In hospitals, deaths are often only being counted as Covid-19 if there was a test confirming it.

I still suspect the number, when population studies come out, will be about double official initial counts.


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April 9th US Covid Data

The curve continues to flatten, which is overall good news, though the mortality rate continues its march upwards.

The federal government will stop paying for Covid-19 testing sites on Friday, so data will be even more unreliable after that.

Edit: The three-day moving average chart was wrong for about an hour. It has been corrected. My apologies.


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April 8th US Covid Data

The three-day rate of increase of new cases continues to drop, and the curve continues to bend.

Note that there is good reason to believe that the number of deaths are severely under-counted. For example:

As of Monday afternoon, 2,738 New York City residents have died from ‘confirmed’ cases of COVID-19, according to the city Department of Health. That’s an average of 245 a day since the previous Monday.

But another 200 city residents are now dying at home each day, compared to 20 to 25 such deaths before the pandemic, said Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. And an untold number of them are unconfirmed.

They’ve said they’ll start counting likely Covid cases as Covid, but it seems unlikely they’ll backfit data, and this is only New York.

I’d expect that the death numbers are about double (maybe more) that of the deaths we know about. One of the problems is that when Covid goes from awful to terrible, it can also make it impossible to go for help. So, if you’re on your own or only with other people with cases, don’t leave it too long.

The data from our benefactor:


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