I didn't intend to get caught up in this Covid pandemic, nor did many others.
But somehow, in the fourth week of January, for the next two weeks, I couldn't get out of bed for more than ten minutes at a time, and my chest felt like it was being squeezed by a python.
By the time I sought help, the hospital was none too eager to see me. They popped me into an isolation room, gave me a few antibiotics, and refused to test me for Covid although President Trump that day at CDC (March 6) announced that "a million tests are now available". Well, he was, shall we kindly say, 'mis-informed.'
Over the next five weeks, I was poked and prodded, given five separate X-ray exams for pneumonia (and presumably the virus), tested for Valley Fever, heart issues, pleurisy, and a host of less well-known things. I have a thesis about medicine--if the name of the disease has a doctor's name associated with it, it is probably not a good thing to be considering.
At this point, I am functioning again, and in the past two weeks have gained back enough strength to be able to walk to the front gate and back (about three hundred yards). The dog is grateful--his evening walks have resumed, and his constitution has never been better.
And then, voila, the studies started emerging that claim that the virus was community-circulating in January and February in both California and Washington--despite numerous assertions that it came from China only in late February. Granted, the studies have been roundly criticized, but not about that finding, simply that the samples weren't entirely random.
And although I had mused that I'd taken no trips for months, reviewing the calendar revealed a three-day sojourn in Napa and Sonoma counties in January, plus a large funeral service in Los Altos, and then a four day February trip to Palm Springs, staying with numerous friends from the Seattle area (about to have an epicenter explosion, we now know), and a work-week at the Tulare County agricultural fair.
The Tulare County Fair was one of the last big gatherings in CA before "shelter-in-place" orders from the governor. It has 150,000+ visitors, from 65 countries. I managed to spend a couple days with a vendor from Daegu, Korea, unaware that Daegu was the epicenter that very week for the Korean covid-19 outbreak. When the hospital urged that I call the Korean person, I shouldn't have been surprised that the company answered in Korean. Engaging an emissary a day later generated an e-maill from them, written in Korean, saying they were fine, and they hoped that I and my colleagues were likewise.
A total of six people at our ranch wound up sick (four saying they felt "deathly ill" for days), all at the same time. We're not exactly a nursing home here, except for geriatric horses, but it seemed a strange coincidence.
So, not that you care about this particular story, what is perhaps important to share is that it caused me to take more interest in the data behind the events, and that in turn has led to what I am now terming the "InnovaScapes Institute Dashboard" You can see rudimentary versions at www.anywhereanytime.io/covid19
This has several important features that are difficult to find on the more prevalent dashboards, that I plan to describe in succeeding posts. Notably, you can group any set of USA counties, and just see them in comparison. Example-- how about just the counties with major ski resorts, destination places where world-wide travelers encamped for days during January-March. Were they worse than surrounding areas, the same, or relatively unscathed? Or, in the case of little Tulare County where I live, it seems odd that a small rural county with only one town of 100,000 folk, would have the seventh highest case-load per capita in CA, or the third highest 'kill-rate' out of 58 counties. Was it that Farm Show, or the two nursing home flare-ups, or a combination?
The macro-map, of 3,144 counties for the 50 states and D.C., reveals the dichotomy of rural vs. urban case-load incidence, giving credence to both those urging relaxed standards and those fearful of future flares. We can plot case-load, new cases, deaths, death-rates per incidence, death-rates per capita, timelines in both linear and logarithmic plots, etc. at the click of a button.
I've longed for this capability, as many of you know, for years for the COPD issues in America, but unavailable to me until now, with the help of Microsoft Power BI business analytics (similar to but seemingly more powerful than Tableau), and with the help of wizards at AnywhereAnytime LLC (anywhereanytime.io) which specialize in Silicon Valley Executive Dashboards. They do an amazing job for C-suite executives seeking powerful synchronous data-visualizations for their business--I thought "why not?" for my concerns.
Stay tuned...
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