Coronavirus, by the numbers, as I see it, Mid July

 Coronavirus, by the numbers, as I see it, Mid July

It has been almost 3 weeks since my last update.  Since then, every state has relaxed their restrictions.  My own area was placed in the “Green” zone this morning.  I plan to not change my behavior at all. 

I am using one unit of measure. Current number of active cases.  I am thinking “Results Based” and that is the only number that matters.

Nationally, on average, the number of active cases have been going up about 1%, per day.  Two weeks ago it was .5%.  Yesterday the growth was 2%, a number we have not seen since mid-May.

The overall death rate is down to 11%, from 12% two weeks ago.  There is good news about a Remdesivir’s effectiveness to mitigate the virus that seems to reduce the morality rate by 2/3rds.  Large scale testing has been started.

Overall, I think the situation is very bad.  We avoided the dire predictions of mid March, of 8 million cases by end of April, and that was good.  We have achieved the plateau over a month ago but have not budged from it.

FYI, most of Europe also are plateaued, Some of the hardest hit countries now have new cases in the mid hundreds.  In the next few weeks we may see serious drops in their numbers.  Of western Europe, only the UK and Sweden (66 and 10 million) exceeded 1,000 new cases yesterday.  Compare that to Texas (population 29 million) adding 6,000 alone.

So how are the states doing?  Since the Federal Government has largely devolved it’s responsibilities to the states, not very well.  I was arguing with someone about my Governor doing a horrible job, but when you think about it, there are 50 Governors, and none are qualified to deal with this situation.  So the US has 50 plans.  With a wide spread of results.  The hardest hit states were mostly the densest packed.  And until a couple of weeks ago, the source of the worst numbers.

Of the 50 states, only 16 have fewer cases now then two weeks ago.  Illinois has the best reduction, 26,000 cases now down from 53,000.  Next follows North Dakota (but the total is only 140, so who cares) and Massachusetts, 8,000 from 12,000.

Other states that dropped are:

NewHampshire -25%

Pennsylvania (-5,000 cases)

Michigan  -20%

SouthDakota

Wisconsin

Nebraska  -15%

Indiana  -10%

Minnesota

Maine

NewJersey  -4% (but 5,000 cases)

Kansas

Colorado

Connecticut  -.13% (just enough to qualify as a reduction.)

 

The bottom of the list, most increases are from least to most:

WestVirginia  +20%

Georgia

Washington

NorthCarolina

Kentucky

Vermont

Tennessee

Missouri  +30%

Louisiana

California  +40%  (+40,000 cases)

Alaska

Mississippi

Utah  +50%

Alabama

Florida  +60%

Arkansas +70%

Oregon

Wyoming

Arizona  (+23,000 cases)

Nevada

Idaho  +100%

SouthCarolina  (+8,000 cases)

Texas  (+ 31,000 cases)

Hawaii  +150% (only 80 cases)

Oklahoma  +175%

Montana  +25% (only 160 cases)

 

New York still has the most cases, 295,000, and growing 3% over two weeks ago.  I have a suspicion that the this number is not accurate, to high by maybe 50%,  based on patterns I see in other states.  Time will tell.

These are the numbers, draw whatever conclusions you can from them.  My excel wookbook is attached, and yes it has macros embedded in it. 

The spread sheet DayToDay are the number of active cases, per state.  Highlights in Green mean a drop in day to day, red means a +20% increase in a single day, orange is an inexplicable drop in the numbers.

The spreadsheet RedBlue a list of all states and their case shift for the last two weeks, and annotated with their political alignment in the 2016 election.