The Dark COVID-19 Winter in Charts
There is some good news and some bad news surrounding the COVID-19 situation in the U.S. The bad news is that the trends around the virus are truly frightening, we’re approaching a rolling 7-day average of sustained 9/11-level deaths every day. While the mortality rate rate is dropping vs. the case rate and vaccines provide a good deal of hope that both will drop in the months ahead, it’s going to take 3 to 6 months before the vaccines really make a dent. In the meantime, the onus is on all of us and our behavior to slow spread and reduce the suffering.
Among the good news that we can quantify is that surveillance testing is way up over where we were in the spring. We have a much better view of where the cases are and how they’re spreading than we did back then. Furthermore, more options such as at-home tests as well as screening at airports and other facilities where people congregate are increasingly available.
For those who seek to attribute more cases to more testing, the month by month slope of the rolling 7-day averages debunks that. Yes, there is some correlative impact: more testing will find more cases but the climbs in positive cases are higher than the climbs in testing rates.
The death rates shouldn’t care whether we’re testing or not, I’d interpret the dips in deaths right after Thanksgiving followed by a steeper climb, as a reporting anomaly. There’s a similar pattern in tests and cases, even though death rates changes normally follow cases by a few weeks.
Alas, the hospitalization rates don’t care about how much we’re testing or not, they’ve been climbing regardless. The number of Americans in the hospital didn’t waver; it’s been on a steady climb since late September.
Lining all of these up side by side, we’re clearly in for dark winter:
Other trends to note: the geographic and demographic distribution of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths has changed from the spring into this winter. What was a problem that radiated around urban areas has spread into the hinterlands of America as well. I don’t have any animated graphics handy that’d demonstrate that trend but examinations of state by state and county by county case, hospitalization and death rates bear that out. Southern California is currently in dire straits; there are many places there with no remaining ICU capacity availability. Here’s the current national snapshot:
Test positivity is looking abysmal in many of the rural states.
California’s positivity rate has been getting on a troubling climb since Thanksgiving
There are trends plotted for I know that the county I’m in is running at 9% positivity; I’d recommend finding these metrics for your locality.
The distribution and administration of the mRNA vaccines is just ramping up now. I’m optimistic that come spring time, we’ll truly start turning the corner on this. But in the meantime, our individual behavior will, in aggregate determine just how dark this winter is. Keep masking up, limit your mixing of physical social bubbles and avoid crowds, especially indoors and confined spaces.
