Breaching 3000

This week we breached 3000 deaths in a day – a sorry state of affairs. Here are some charts/images with certain data highlighted:

There are also a couple of other notable statistics: 1) in December we are averaging above 200K cases per day now, 2) we seem to be averaging over 1 million cases a week, 3) hospitalizations have been steadily rising, setting records every day, and 4) deaths seem to be firmly averaging around 2500 a day. We are deep, deep into the winter COVID-hell.

Even on the world stage, our cases are skyrocketing out of this solar system. The number of cases appears to be rising exponentially compared to the rest of the world and our death count appears to be accelerating just ever so slightly. Percentage-wise in cases, we used to hover around 18% but we’ve been firmly in 22% for a while now.

The COVID tracking project shows the death count breaching 3000 twice this week, but the John Hopkins data shows it only once. I’m not sure how to read this but in any case, I am not looking for exactitude but for direction since I’m sure nobody knows the “exact” number of daily cases and deaths. I’m looking at the data as ballpark numbers.

I do notice that the COVID tracking case numbers tend to be between Wikipedia numbers and John Hopkins numbers, probably because I can pull the John Hopkins numbers only the following day. In other words, while I can pull Wikipedia and the COVID tracking data for today (12/11/2020) at around 9 pm on 12/11/2020 (actually probably earlier in the evening, maybe by 6 pm), I can’t pull John Hopkins data for 12/11/2020 until tomorrow, 12/12/2020. This means that the JH data is probably the most “up-to-date” as possible. Meanwhile Wikipedia is doing a pretty good job, considering that this is a volunteer effort. Their numbers are close enough for me. (In the graphics below, cases are on the right, deaths are on the left.)

The Thanksgiving surge case numbers should be coming in this week so we’ll see how tonight’s and tomorrow night’s pull looks like. All this week, doctors have been warning to avoid travels or get togethers over the Christmas holidays, but I was just reading that maybe a third of men and young people are planning on attending Christmas and New Year’s parties. It looks like the only way they are going to take this virus seriously is if they or someone they know get it and end up seriously ill, fighting for their life. Why does it have to get to that point?

Right now, according to the news, hospitals are starting to collapse, not just in rural areas but also in large cities. Earlier in the week, there were a few articles that said the HHS had put out hospitalization capacity data for public consumption. HHS felt they had to put out that data now due to the seriousness of the situation. Rural areas are going to hurt more than cities because they don’t have the personnel or resources to take care of all of the patients, and larger cities are beginning to be constrained and thus cannot take on the rural patients.

This constraint means there is a potential for unnecessary deaths from non-COVID factors because the hospitals do not have enough beds or nurses. That is the reason why public officials have been sounding alarms and been trying to impose some regulations surrounding masks and gatherings: it’s to maintain hospital capacity for all emergencies, including cancer, heart attacks, accidents. People still die from other causes; that doesn’t stop just because COVID consumes the beds.

Cases

Okay, to wrap up, here are some general graphics, starting with cases. Here you can see that while the overall US cases have been rising and rising, the Midwest recently, since about mid-November, to be undergoing a declining number of cases and has recently leveled out. I don’t know if this leveling is a sign of impending upward rise or just a leveling for the foreseeable future. In any case, the Midwest seems to have dampened their surge.

The other regions though seems to be undergoing a relentless rise in cases; the only exception would be Hawaii.

Deaths

Meanwhile, deaths are continuing to rise. As previously noted, this past week we have breached the 3000 threshold and the CDC director has said this level of deaths will continue for the next 2 or 3 months.

Every region is experiencing a rise in death counts which might be attributable to the increasing hospitalization constraints. Hospitals are starting to fill up, thus leading to degradation in service and in turn leading to more deaths. The death surges in the South are not as well defined (to my eye at least) as they are in the Midwest. Even the Northeast – in a small fashion – and the West are showing a better defined surges than the South. I’m not sure what is the reason behind the South’s ill-defined death surge. When looking at the hospitalizations in the South, the rate is still increasing which doesn’t suggest an impending capacity wall where hospitals can no longer take on patients. However, I could be wrong about that; I need to look at the HHS hospitalization data they’ve recently released to see what their story tells for the South. At this time, I have no idea why the graphs for the South’s death count looks the way it does. Could it be poor data reporting?

Hospitalizations

While overall US shows continuing record levels of hospitalizations – we’re at the 100K plus levels now – the Midwest shows a leveling in hospitalizations. Even though their case counts have been declining since mid-November, I think the initial leveling may have been due to the overloading of the hospitals and thus cannot take on anymore patients. Now that the case decline has been occurring for some time now, that recent dip in hospitalization may be a real sign of some easing in the hospitals. The news this week has been a lot about hospitals collapsing, especially in the Midwest, but I suspect that there is a possibility of a lag in awareness of the situation. Some governors across the Midwest have started to institute mask mandates or restrictions in gathering indoors because of the alarming hospital situation.

These series of graphics at the state levels show that in the Midwest, the leveling off has happened almost across the board. The West also shows some incipient signs of leveling off also, but the South and Northeast are still showing strong rising hospitalizations.

Positivity Rate

And finally, positivity rate appears to be leveling off also. I’m not sure if that is a real sign of improvement or just a temporary lull in the upward march.

All of these graphics are practically before the Thanksgiving holiday effects have fully kicked in. I’m thinking that by next week we’ll have a better idea whether the holiday surge has started or whether people have actually been careful and heeded public officials’ suggestions to protect themselves.