COVID-19 day 102 : 📈 1,103,781 cases; 65,068 deaths : 01 May 2020

The “lies, damn lies, and statistics" edition; WA state stays closed, TX opens following a record-high day of new cases; US cases on slight increase; intelligence officials say virus not engineered

It’s day 102 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States.  A numbers-focused, limited edition.

Numbers can tell different stories while remaining “accurate.” Hence “lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

As I’ve stated before, the bias in news reports towards raw data is not new (see box office reports) and may relate to the innumerate nation that we seem to be.

My friend Gina Neff reminded us on Thursday that stories matter. The stories we tell around COVID-19 matter. And so I shall beat the drum of per capita comparisons once more.

The range in per capita deaths by state is enormous, from a high of 95.66 deaths per 100,000 in New York to a low 1.13 in Hawaii. The median: 5.5.

Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp (R) is leading the nation in rapidly “re-opening” the state ranks #15 in per capita deaths with 11 per 100,000. Two weeks ago, it was 6 per 100,000.

▪️Friday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,103,781 (1,069,826) cases and 65,068 (63,019) deaths in the US, an increase of 3.17% and 3.25%, respectively, since Thursday. A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 4.16% and 3.97%, respectively. The trend has dropped significantly from its peak but improvement has basically plateaued.

• The seven-day average: 28,350 (28,665) cases and 1,874 (1,865) deaths

• That case rate is 323.21 per 100,000; the death rate, 19.04 per 100,000. 

• One week ago, the case rate was 273.51 per 100,000; the death rate,15.70 per 100,000.

Note: numbers in (.) are from the prior day and are provided for context. I include the seven-day average because dailies vary so much in the course of a week.

🤓Recommended reading

President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump Moves to Replace Watchdog Who Identified Critical Medical Shortages. New York Times, 01 May 2020.

🔬Research and medical news

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer

New by me! The sewers may help us decide when to reopen—and when to shut down a neighborhood instead of a whole city. #covid19

nytimes.comIs It Safe to Come Out of Lockdown? Check the SewerWastewater could provide early, painless and localized data about the rise or fall of coronavirus levels.

Trevor Bedford @trvrb

If we continue at our current pace of perhaps ~300k infections per day (). The US would have very roughly 50M cumulative infections by September 1 and be at ~15% population immunity. 10/10

Trevor Bedford @trvrb

Estimating total number of infections is difficult without serology (see this thread: https://t.co/D6v4uqHoKr), but I'd guess that we're catching between 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 infections as a confirmed case. 14/18

💃🏼Life hack (or laugh)

⚡️Kathy E Gill | Staying at home @kegill

Don't know who surfaced this or how it happened, but wowza. Best aged tweet that I think I've ever seen.

Drew Curtis @DrewCurtis

Admission: I'm a time traveler from 2020. Enjoy 2016 - it's as good as it gets for awhile

⓵ Around the country

Texas. Positive cases increased by 1,033, on Thursday, the biggest one-day jump in three weeks. And the governor ended his stay-at-home order on Friday.

Washington state is on Day 36 of Stay Home, Stay Healthy. Gov. Jay Inslee extended the stay-at-home order until 31 May.

In the plan issued Friday, Washington’s economy and social life would reopen in four phases, with some types of businesses ideally beginning to reopen in mid-May as the first phase even as the stay-home order remains until the end of the month.

~~~

Let’s turn to raw numbers for a moment. They have a place as well, particularly in trends. And neither of these trends of the past seven days makes me smile.

For both absolute number of daily cases and absolute numbers of daily deaths, we’re ending this seven-day period with a number larger than we started. Not enormously larger, but larger.

There’s a lot of variance in day-to-day reports. So I checked three different data sets (each with slightly different methodology). All painted a similar picture: end-of-week on a slightly larger note.

When you factor in the lag between exposure and testing positive, then between testing positive and death, it’s obvious that this trend began earlier in April Perhaps it is the meat packing plant cases. Maybe it’s the prisons.

If you see an explanation, please share. It’s probably related to this:

Trevor Bedford @trvrb

I know all the discussion is about a possible "2nd wave", but I've found this odd given that we haven't finished the first one. I would think quite possible that, nationally, we're in for a scenario of a long plateau. 1/10

Another place trend data is helpful: emergency room visits with COVID-like symptoms that resulted in hospitalizations, like this example from Washington’s Department of Health. It clearly implies undocumented cases of COVID-19 due to a lack of tests.

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have identified COVID-19 cases and all have at least one death.  

Please take a moment and answer this short reader survey! ✅

⓶ Around the world

Eric Feigl-Ding @DrEricDing

2) Besides early distancing, what’s another winning factor? ➡️ EARLY TESTING! Iceland 🇮🇸 and Faroe Islands 🇫🇴 win the championship cups. Austria 🇦🇹 gets a solid honorable mention. #COVID19

The number of affected countries/territories/areas jumped from 29 at the end of February  to 209 today. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a seafood (“wet”) market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data suggest that the virus may have developed elsewhere.

⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19

Nicole Hemmer @pastpunditry

People have chosen to radically alter their lives both to avoid getting sick and to save other people's lives. That is a significant political act, and there is enormous support for it. But it doesn't fit conventional political scripts so it's not understood as political.

What is understood as “political” by newspapers and TV stations: the minority who are storming state capitols. Reminder: these “movements” are the result of conservative political operatives, particularly those organized around the second amendment.

Marianne Williamson @marwilliamson

No, people who storm a state capitol with assault weapons, frightening everyone around them,are not best described as “good people.” And no the governor should not “make a deal with them.” We don’t negotiate with terrorists... remember?

businessinsider.comTrump calls protesters who carried guns into the Michigan Capitol ‘very good people’ and says the governor should ‘make a deal’ with them“These are very good people, but they are angry,” Trump said of militia members who brought guns into the Capitol. “They want their lives back again, safely!”

▪️White House blocks Dr. Fauci from testifying before Congress.

▪️The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement saying that there is no indication that the virus was “manmade or genetically modified” and that this conformed with “widespread scientific consensus.” Nevertheless, they want to investigate a lab in Wuhan to see if the virus escaped from there. Need I remind you that it’s impossible to prove a negative.

The intelligence statement was released hours after a report in The New York Times that said Trump administration officials were pushing spy agencies to look for evidence on whether a government laboratory in Wuhan was the origin point for the coronavirus. 

▪️Maryland is keeping its stockpile of PPE at an “undisclosed location” because of a fear that it might be confiscated by the federal government.

⓸ Case count

There is a lag between being contagious and showing symptoms, between having a test and getting its results. The virus was not created in a lab.

🌎 01 May 

WHO Situation report, 102

• Globally: 3 175 207 cases (84 771 - new) with 224 172 deaths (6,403 - new)

• The Americas: 1 291 917 cases (45 727 - new) with 69 087 deaths (3,859 - new)

Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.30 pm Pacific)

• Global confirmed: 3,344,435 ( 3,257,996 - yesterday)

• Total deaths: 238,788 ( 233,429 - yesterday)

• Recovered: 1,055,536 ( 1,014,931 - yesterday)

🇺🇸 01 May 

• CDC: 1,062,446 (1,031,659) cases and 62,406 (60,057) deaths

• Johns Hopkins*: 1,103,781 (1,069,826) cases and 65,068 (63,019) deaths

• State data*:  1,095,681 (1,061,101) identified cases and 59,059 (57,266) deaths 

• Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 6,551,810 (6,231,182)

View infographic and data online: total cases, cases/100,000 and deaths/million.

* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.30 pm Pacific.
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands

⓹ What you can do

• Stay home as much as possible, period. 

• What do to when you or a loved one feels sick

• Digestive problems may be a symptom.

Resources

👓 See COVID-19 resource collection at WiredPen.
📝 Subscribe to Kathy’s Daily Memo :: Daily Memo archives
🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
🌐 Global news

👏🏻Thank you for your time!

🎤Please spread the word about the newsletter.