California and others LAST WEEK

We've had a veritable explosion in California cases in the past week, well beyond any week this year for new Covid Cases.    But the per capita choropleth for New Cases and Deaths doesn't look ALL THAT BAD, at least compared to the "leaders" in the Dakotas and some neighboring states.   Take a look . . . 

Contrast that with the Dakotas, which just took the lead for the world, in per capita deaths.  And then try to reconcile the idiot Governor of South Dakota who yesterday urged her citizens "to get together for Thanksgiving" to celebrate this wonderful holiday in America.   She is so appallingly ignorant.

Neighoring states aren't "Quite As Bad" but hardly like California.   Note that the absolute numbers for all of these states are not too high, but the per capita numbsers (YOUR ODDS, actually) are terrible.

And another couple of Rocky Mountain states

And finally, some neighbors of the Dakotas.   This all seems to have been ignited by the famous (now infamous) Sturgis Motorcycle rally in mid-August.  Whoopee--how damn dumb can people be?

This can't be real -- really?

 November 16, 2020

The press coverage that stopped me cold was this: a South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”

1 Alicia Kohn, The Hill, November 16, 2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/526204-south-dakota-nurse-says-many-dying-patients-still-insist-covid-19-not

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be... facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.”

A South Dakota emergency room nurse on Monday expressed frustration that many of her patients don't believe they are dying of COVID-19.

Jodi Doering's tweet went viral on social media over the weekend after she tweeted about patients who "don’t believe the virus is real ... while gasping for breath on 100% Vapotherm."

"It wasn't one particular patient, it's just a culmination of so many people," Doering told CNN's "New Day." "And their last, dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.... People want it to be influenza, they want it to be pneumonia," Doering said. "We've even had people say, 'You know, I think it might be lung cancer.' ... Even after positive results come back, some people just don't believe it."

Doering said multiple patients target nurses like her with their "anger and hatred."

"They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that 'stuff' because they don’t have COVID because it’s not real," she tweeted on Saturday. "I think it's just a belief that it's not real and nursing happens to be on the receiving end of that," she told CNN.

Other health professionals have accused South Dakota's leaders of also being in denial.

“You in the Dakotas … you knew it was coming,” Dr. Ali Mokdad, a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, told USA TODAY this month. “You denied it ... even today you are denying it.”

Mokdad was responding to South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem saying her state's per capita death rate was better than New York's over the course of the pandemic. 

Tuesday data from the COVID Tracking Project shows that South Dakota and neighboring North Dakota continue to have the highest per capita rates of COVID-19 infection and death in the nation.  

In fact, their case-rates are higher than any nation on earth.  Governor Noem is correct that New York's per capita death rate is higher, which discounts two significant facts -- 1. those all happened early, before doctors had much sense about possible treatments; and 2. it happened selectively, mainly to nursing homes with elderly patients most susceptible, in NYC.   

Here are some comparative numbers for the past ten months, and for the past ten weeks.  Note that North and South Dakota are "out-performing" on new cases; their death rates are more modest until you look at recent data

Here's the overall data for Cases per 100K, and Deaths per 100K (Since January 2020), and yes, NY and NJ are well ahead of the Dakotas on total death-rate, even though the Dakotas 'win' the Case Loads

But here's the RECENT DATA, from the ill-fated Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota to now

We have clear winners in the Dakotas on both Case-rates and Death-rates. One out of 11 are infected in North Dakota recently, and 1 out of 14 in South Dakota, but "THIS ISN'T REAL?"

COMPARATIVE STATS FOR USA and some of EUROPE

 Lest we forget, or fail to read or listen to International News, Covid is resurging in Europe, a region given lots of praise for 'handling the pandemic better than the US' during the spring and summer.   And more than a few US pundits have said "See, their methods (by which they mean 'lock-down') didn't work any better than ours--so we can stay on the (lunatic) course that we're on."

I know, I know--I'm letting my emotional self get in the way of unbiased reporting here, but myGawd, how can people be so myopic on the severity and extent of this pandemic.

So, with respect to the US vs. some other countries, how'ze it goin' now?   Well, herewith some insight

So that story is pretty dynamic at the moment.   Just how dynamic?   Well, let's include France and Spain alongside the UK, since they are truly experiencing a recent sky-rocketing case-load

How do these numbers compare with the recent boost in USA states?   Well, not too worrisome if you are 'on the continent'.     Check out especially the Dakotas, three months downstream from the Sturgis motorcycle rally.   But the more significant story, in my view, is that many US states are way worse than nearly all countries on a per capita basis.    And with the recent explosion in US cases, this only portends to get worse, not better.

Just for completeness, here's the most recent compilation for US states in both absolute and per capita terms, for both Confirmed Cases and Deaths.

If your eyes aren't fully glazed over from all of these charts, I applaud your fortitude and enthusiasm.

If you would care to see more, just ask.

All the best, and stay as safe as possible.

The numbers are skyrocketing

 During a time that Confirmed Cases in the USA are sky-rocketing, I've been surprised by two things:

1. A lot of my friends and colleagues, even those who were 'on-top-of' the Covid scene a couple months ago, have recently expressed amazement that the US numbers are rapidly escalating

2. Almost no one, amongst those same friends and colleagues, seem aware that Europe is exploding too

What the 'ell happened?   Are we just too fatigued to notice any longer?   Have we lost the capacity for outrage?   The story about the frog never jumping out of the pot as it slowly was brought to boil???

Just for 'grins' it is worth noting, I think, that eight of the last nine days -- THINK ABOUT THAT -- EIGHT OUT OF NINE days in a row, set new records for USA Confirmed Cases.

Thursday July 16   (3½ months ago)         79,522      A new record for USA, first day of 70,000+

Friday July 24                                            72,635      2^nd day ever over 70,000

 

Thursday October  22                                77,114      2^nd worst day ever, only third day ever  over 70,000

Friday October 23                                     82,531      New USA record, first one over 80,000

 

Wednesday October 28                            77,982      2^nd worst day ever

Thursday October 29 (9 days ago)          88,581      A new record high for the USA

Friday Oct 30 (day before Halloween)    95,953      Beat yesterday’s record handily

Weekends are usually lighter, but . . .

Sunday November 1                                82,567      3^rd worst day ever (vs. last week's records)

Monday November 2                              85,370      3^rd worst day ever

Tuesday November 3 (election day)       91,545      2^nd worst day ever

Wednesday November 4                       107,009      Way worst than last week’s record

Thursday November 5                           117,284      Ten thousand worse than yesterday’s NEW record

Friday November 6                               128,000+    Ten thousand worse than yesterday’s NEW record

 

I’d call this “in trouble”    We can examine this in depth, or we can just say "Ah, shit" and hope it gets better soon (hope for a miracle?  expecting citizens to decide to do "the right thing"???

Hindsight and foresight

 On September 1st this year, I posted a short essay entitled "What're the odds you know (or knew) someone?"   It posited that there might indeed be some ratio of Confirmed Cases in any locale that might help people begin to address the reality that Covid is indeed a pandemic of serious consequence, and not a Trumpian or 'fake news' hoax.   I put that number at somewhere between 1 out of 20 to 1 out of 30 in your community, because at that number, you likely will know a specific person by name who has it.

I wrote this two weeks after the end of the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota, as Trump was hosting election rallies in the upper Midwest.   We didn't at that time 'know' what the Sturgis impact might be.   And at that time, only 61 counties, a mere 2% of the USA, had more than 5,000 cases per capita (5,000/100,000 = 1 in 20).    

And Trump had not himself become infected as yet.

So here we are, nine weeks later, nearing the end of a hotly contested Presidential election, in a week that for the first time, has back-to-back 100,000+ new Confirmed Cases daily.  

What are the current "Do you know someone?" ratios?   Well, take a look at this table:

So, two months ago, fewer than 2% of America's counties had 1 person in 20 infected.   Today, that number is 12% of counties, or 1 out of 8, versus 1 out of 50.    Maybe more significantly, today 40% of US counties have at least one person in 30 who has been Confirmed Infected, vs. only 8% 2 months ago

At that point two months ago, 20 states had NO counties with that many cases; today only 7 states can claim the same 'it's not happening here'      

One big change, and it is an important one--the average age of Confirmed Cases continues to decline, dipping now more than ever into children and young adults, and the younger workforce who have all basically been urged to 'go back to work or school'.    The reason for this, of course, is that deaths are very disproportionately happening to older victims, so as the pool of young cases rises in percentage, naturally the death rate for the entire populace declines.   In addition, treatments are getting better, and hopefully we'll see some effective vaccines in the not-too-distant future.   

We'll cover more detail on these aspects in a future post.

Shifting loci of Hot Spots

 The last post concerned the recent spate of Covid Cases in the Upper Midwest.   That spurred some immediate questions about "wasn't there an East Coast thing?" and "how about the South?"

So I thought, let's do several four week intervals, for every one of which we're using the choropleth for Confirmed Cases, where Orange is BAD, and is > 1 person per hundred for that county for that period.

The intervals I selected are:

A. SPRING      March 30--April 27.    This spans the Easter (April 12) by which time President Trump wanted everything RE-OPENED (speech March 24).

B. MEMORIAL DAY     May 18-June 15      This spans the period when many states partially re-opened 

C. MID-SUMMER     July 20-August 17     This covers the outbreaks from July 4 parties , heavily Southern due to governors opening bars and touting 4th of July backyard barbeques

D. EARLY AUTUMN     Sept 13-October 11    This covers the Labor Day celebrations, the late August South Dakota Motorcycle rally, and Trump rallies in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin

SPRING

Confirmed Cases per capita    March 31-April 27, 2020

Note that the Eastern Seaboard, New Orleans (Mardi Gras) and multiple Ski Resorts (Colorado, Utah, Idaho,) and Native American reservations (Arizona, New Mexico, Washington) were uniquely hit.

MEMORIAL DAY

Confirmed Cases per capita     May 18-June 15, 2020

Indian reservations are devastated; states where the governors ignored all the CDC admonistions (South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia) are the worst.  Also note the meat packing houses in Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Central California

MID-SUMMER

Confirmed Cases per capita      July 20-August 17, 2020

Texas, Florida, and indeed the entire South, plus an ignorant set of leaders in Central California and right-wing enthusiasts in Idaho and Arizona acted as though the pandemic was either over or was a total hoax.   How'd that work out?

EARLY AUTUMN

Confirmed Cases per capita        September 13-October 11, 2020

And now, the Upper Midwest plus Oklahoma and Virginia reap the benefit of Trump rallies.

Hard to escape the choropleth story, right?

The upper Midwest gets a turn

I continue to be amazed by folk around the country who have been insistent that this COVID stuff is all a big hoax.   The most recent examples being mentioned periodically (and scoffed at too often) on the news is that the upper Midwest is “finally” experiencing its own understanding of the pandemic.

Start with the ill-fated Motorcycle rally in South Dakota, and come forward with the Trump rally in Wisconsin, and here’s the picture for the PER CAPITA Case Load for the 3,142 counties in America for the past four weeks.  Orange is BAD.   It would be unseemly to poke fun, but one can only wish that people would at least listen to sensible news stories and believe this stuff.

Data for 4 weeks -- County by County Confirmed COVID cases for Sept 14-Oct 11, 2020

Orange is BAD

 

Might also be worth pointing out that 1 out of every 4 Californians 80 years old and older, who came down with confirmed Covid have died this year.    One out of four.  25%.

 

For folk between ages 18-34, one out of 1,200 have died.   So the odds are 300 times worse for the geriatric set, of which there are quite a number in our collegial set

Keep wearing those masks