Context for USA vs CALIF vs our counties

 It's always a question whenever something goes wrong--as the event unfolds, who believes what in the chaos and noise?   And yes, we could say that, profoundly, about the tragic events of January 6 at the national capital, but I am thinking today primarily about the ongoing ravaging Covid pandemic.

Many folk we've talked with this week have seemingly turned blasé about the virus.  Is it due to the imminent (perhaps) arrival of a vaccine, or the domination of political news instead, or the "pandemic fatigue" now bandied about as 'normal'?   Even our data source, USA Facts, has struggled to keep their site updated, or even accurate--something we've not experienced at all in the first nine months of the pandemic

And now, California, said to be 'on top' of this virus almost from the get-go, is 'the worst' in America.  Meanwhile, 1 million Californians have signed a recall petition for Governor Newsom because he has the gumption to insist on controlled lockdowns (thwarting our precious freedom to kill others or die).

So, just from a data-driven perspective, how bad is it?   Here, grouped by 10 day intervals, are the last six intervals for the US data, the CA data, and the three Agricultural counties where I currently live

So, in six weeks, American cases have doubled, and deaths are up by a factor of 3.  So much for the issue about the Thanksgiving surge.  YUP, we had one.   How about for the Christmas holidays--well, we don't know yet, but the first eight days of January are up 31% nationally over the previous high (of Dec 21-31).   Is a mere 31% a surge on top of record numbers?   Well, if your stock market holdings went up 31%, you'd likely be astounded.   

But while America doubled in cases, our state was up by a factor of 6.5x--let me state that again, UP BY SIX and a HALF TIMES, and our local counties kept pace.   Deaths?  Well, compare the graphs and it is easy to see the same SIX and a HALF TIMES, but note that the swift rise was delayed by two weeks on average.   So, if we just have experienced another 31% increase in cases, we'll likely be up somewhere close to TEN TIMES the average death rate as we move through January 2021.  

Hard for me to be blasé about all this; how about you?

So, how bad is the holiday spike so far

 We've compared a number of regions (e.g. counties, states) in previous posts.  For this post, I'd like to illustrate our three local counties (the BIG AGricultural Counties for California) once again.   

We've discussed these in previous posts.   See, for example, June 7, July 6, July 13 and Nov 21.

Well, this new graphic compares the June/July spike (our previous 'all-time' high) to the past few weeks

Note the characteristic lag in deaths vs. Confirmed cases.   The troubling thing here is that quite possibly the true death impact of the 51,000 cases from Dec 8-Dec 28 are not yet reflected in the huge spike from Dec 21-28.   We'll see, and let's hope it doesn't rise much higher if at all.

Think of it this way, though:  51,000 cases for a population of about 2.5 million.  Says 1 in 50 people in these 3 counties were confirmed in a three week period, for a pandemic that is now within three weeks of a year's duration.    At that rate, 1 in 3 people would be confirmed over a year.   I'm 80, love to have the vaccine do its work as soon as practical.

We called yesterday to try to find a schedule for me to get the vaccine--just as with tests in our county in March, the answer was "we don't have any vaccine, and we have no idea when we might get some, let alone an idea of who will qualify first."

Meanwhile, keep the faith

South Dakota and choropleths and fake data

 Some fascinating (to statisticians) numbers have surfaced.   First of all, December was far and away America's worst Covid month to date.   Sad, and true.   The Thanksgiving Spike did in fact appear, and a few places, notably California, especially suffered.   We'll report some of that in a future post.  Oddly, a few places that were not doing well, e.g. South Dakota, did much better than anticipated.   

South Dakota appears to have done particularly well by seeming to erase a number of their cases this week.    Here, for example are the statistics for four of their 66 counties (Beadle, Hughes, Minnehaha, and Pennington) from January  22 through October 31

And here's the count from November 1 through December 29 

Which gives a net overall year for those four counties as follows:

MUCH BETTER, DON'T YOU THINK?

WOW--they were able to have 16,713 cases in just these four counties decide not to be Covid-related after all, and 29 who died weren't from Covid upon further review, but from underlying causes.   After suffering a heavy media attack in November, was Governor Kristi Noem  able to persuade her Health Department to change the data in the last two months?  True, she was abetted by locals--recall that South Dakota was the scene of the Sturgis motorcycle rally in August that eventually was traced to more than 300,000 Covid cases in the Midwest, an event that Noem defended vigorously at the time, and throughout the autumn.

These four counties are not the only place in South Dakota with such manipulation.   Here's the national choropleth for November and December -- note how few places are white, e.g. pristine.  Amazingly, virtually ALL OF THEM are in SOUTH DAKOTA

Compare that to the national choropleth for January 22 through October 31, and no anomalies leap out

On the national scene, it is worth noting perhaps that November and December (even with the South Dakota subtractions) had 53% of the cases for the entire year.  Here's the past 59 days

And here's the national total for 344 days

Looking just at South Dakota choropleths, here is the Jan 22-Oct 31 graph next to Nov 1-Dec 29

So, just what the hell is happening in South Dakota?   Perusal of South Dakota newspapers is not at all revealing, but review of several independent sources shows a different story.   Here's the Harvard data https://covidactnow.org/us/south_dakota-sd/county/minnehaha_county?s=1482438 

And here's the CDC data, through December 31 

So, let's look at Minnehaha County on our Dashboard.  Here's Jan 22-Dec 27

And here's Jan 22-Dec 28.   MUCH BETTER, don't you think?

So, it appears that Harvard and CDC think it is still pretty high, and in fact has added 823 new confirmed cases and 13 deaths in the past three days.   So, are we seeing truly manipulated data or is this just an aberration of distorted facts temporarily in USAFacts?

The above analysis "popped out" from just comparing the national choropleths last night.   And it certainly gave me some interesting challenges for 'what happened'.   But it apparently is NOT an aberrant governor, nor malfeasance.    Instead, upon digging in, it is apparent that during the Christmas holidays, someone at USAFacts got some tables mixed up, and assigned the updated columns for all the new cases and deaths, displaced by one row.   So, Minnehaha county's data went to Moody county; Lincoln's data went to Lyman county, and Pennington's data went to Perkins county.    So, my guess is that next week, this will all be straightened around, but we'll hold the anomalous data in our database forever.   Here's the tipoff--comparing recent changes by the 'worst' counties and the 'best'

So, a wild goose chase after all.   But proof positive that the overall choropleths can reveal anomalous problems easily, something that I have asserted for years, but have never had a better demonstration