Category: COVID Archives

Boring, but good boring…

I apologize if this is getting boring, but the report seems the same every day. Slow, but steady progress at the national level, with steady increases in testing. In fact, we saw record tests reported today – 367,453. By the end of the month, I expect we’ll see the U.S. about ½ way down the back side of the curve. No news on the IHME front. They still estimate that we saw peak daily deaths about a month ago on April 16.

The majority of states have now relaxed restrictions or never imposed restrictions (we’re now up to 26 states). I’m still not seeing any pattern differences between states that are opening up and states that remain with full restrictions – let’s hope that continues. If we see any flare-ups in any of the states that I’m tracking, you’ll be the first to know.

I’ve been doing a number of newspaper and radio interviews, and as I get the links, I’ll post them in this report.

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): April 16 (last revision on May 12)
• Short term projection for active cases tomorrow: 157,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 367,453
• Total Pending tests reported today: 2,673 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 1.8% (very low)

Significant progress while I was gone

I’ve been hiking for the past few days, so there is 3 days of data to catch up with. Significant declines on the national front, even while testing volume is quite a bit higher. The IHME model updated again yesterday, but is still showing that the U.S. experienced peak daily deaths back on April 16.

The majority of states have now relaxed restrictions or never imposed restrictions (we’re now up to 26 states). Of the various states that I’m tracking, only California is still obviously trending up. I’m still not seeing any pattern differences between states that are opening up and states that remain with full restrictions – let’s hope that continues.

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): April 16 (last revision on May 12)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,400,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 336,392
• Total Pending tests reported today: 1,983 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 1.6% (very low)

Declines in WA, FL, NY, MA, SC, MI, TX, VA

Hello all – Happy Mother’s Day. It’s also my wonderful wife Monique’s birthday, and Fred Astaire’s birthday.

We’re going hiking for a few days, so the next report will be Wednesday or Thursday. I expect current downward trends to continue – we haven’t seen anything anomalous for a while now. The IHME model updated today, and they painstakingly moved a lot of the death data to date of death, so now show peak deaths pack on April 16.

We now have about 19 states that have relaxed restrictions (I looked a few days ago, could be more now). I’m not seeing any pattern differences between states that are opening up and states that remain with full restrictions – that’s good news, but we’ll keep watching carefully.

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

•  Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): April 16 (last revision on May 10)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,345,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 277,894
• Total Pending tests reported today: 3,095 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 1.67% (a new low)

Declines in WA, NY, NC, MA, GA, MI, PA, TX

Very high reported test results today once again, over 300,000, with the positive rate again at only 8%. This is good – as testing has grown, the number of cases found has declined. Most all the states I’m tracking show declines today.

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): May 1 (last revision on May 4)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,325,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 309,842
• Total Pending tests reported today: 3,054 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 2.0% (very low)

Declines in NY, FL, MA, GA, MI, TX, VA

Very high reported test results today once again, nearly 300,000, with the positive rate again about 8%. This is good – as testing has grown, the number of cases found has not.

I became aware of a few new randomized studies today, and have been working on updating my mortality estimates. I’ll report on this soon – no big changes, though. I still roughly estimate the mortality rate about 0.09% for those under age 65, and about 2.5% for those 65 and over. Here is an article outlining some of the studies: https://www.biospace.com/article/multiple-studies-suggest-covid-19-mortality-rate-may-be-lower-than-expected-/

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): May 1 (last revision on May 4)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,300,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 294,275
• Total Pending tests reported today: 3,307 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 2.2% (very low)

Virginia mystery solved

I spent the better part of the day reconciling cases from the Virginia Department of Health website with the various reporting outlets. I believe I understand it now, and will discuss it below when we talk about Virginia. It will give you some insight into the data analysis challenges.

A record number of tests were reported today – nearly 350,000. The positive rate was less than 8%. I wish I knew the nature of the 92% of tests that returned negative – if we had this data, we’d be able to make a better calculation of the true growth rate. It’s clear that the growth rate as calculated is somewhat overstated by the increase in testing, but we don’t know how much.

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): May 1 (last revision on May 4)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,242,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 345,742
• Total Pending tests reported today: 3,171 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 2.3% (very low)

National growth rate 1.9% — declines nearly everywhere

The headlines can’t stop with the bad news – please take everything with a grain of salt, as the national reporting is generally at a very superficial level. Could we have a surge of COVID in May? Perhaps, but it’s important to realize that there is no evidence of this in the data to date. I’m going to pin yesterday’s model discussion to the bottom of the daily report for those just joining the list now. As I said yesterday, I’m not knowledgeable about epidemiology – I’m just a mathematician — I have no agenda — I just follow the data where it leads us. If things deteriorate, we’ll know quickly from the data itself.

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): May 1 (last revision on May 4)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,242,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 215,443
• Total Pending tests reported today: 2,742 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 1.9% (very low)

National growth rate 1.9% — declines nearly everywhere

So there are numerous headlines about increased COVID propagation this month. It is primarily coming from Epidemiologic models with many assumptions. My modeling work was purely mathematical – fitting non-linear functions (in my case Logistic functions) to time series data. Disease models use many assumptions about transmission rates, mobility, transition probabilities through various states of disease, etc.. The IHME model was more of a pure mathematical model until this latest revision, where they moved to a hybrid model. I believe they painted themselves into a corner when they declared some weeks ago that no relaxation of restrictions was safe until a state had less than 1 COVID case per million of population. No state has (or will likely) meet that criteria. We likely don’t meet that criteria with flu even this late in the season. So with states opening up now, they really had to project a worsening of results. However, the problem with the assumption driven models is that they have very wide confidence intervals – a few tweaks in assumptions and they produce very different results. What we see happening now is that some modelers are ASSUMING that relaxing restrictions must have a significant negative effect. I’m not so sure. The disease was already slowing down in late March before most of the lockdowns could have any effect. The lockdowns didn’t change much, and I expect releasing them won’t change much either. Why? Simply because the lockdowns are not the most significant motivator of human behavior. People started self-preservation behavior long before they were told to, and they will adapt to the great opening by finding new and continuing ways to be cautious. In any event, we can speculate about growth in COVID over the month of May, but there is no evidence of it yet. The data are still in decline.

I’m not knowledgeable about epidemiology – I’m just a mathematician — I have no agenda — I just follow the data where it leads us. If things deteriorate, we’ll know quickly from the data itself.

I’ve been talking for a while now about opening the economy demographically, rather than geographically. The mortality rate is so dramatically different for those over and under 65 that it makes more sense to protect those in need of protection, and let others rejoin the economy. We’d save as many lives (maybe more), and only have a fraction of the economic damage. This idea is now starting to get some press. This one is from today’s Wall St. Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/targeted-lockdowns-are-better-11588630768?mod=MorningEditorialReport&mod=djemMER_h

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): May 1 (last revision on May 4)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,220,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 259,150
• Total Pending tests reported today: 2,633 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 1.9% (very low)

National growth rate falls to new low of 1.8%

Another day, another decline. As expected, the states are uneven day to day in their decline, but today we even see a decline in Virginia (it’s about time, but it’s just one day). Daily deaths continue their downward journey, with today’s deaths the lowest since March.

I’m still watching to see if we see any differences between states that reopen and those that do not, but I doubt we’ll see anything interesting, because early studies show no correlation between lockdown dates and disease progression, and now Forbes reports that “shelter in place” is over pretty much everywhere anyway, and people are starting to go about their business: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/05/01/apple-data-shows-shelter-in-place-is-ending-whether-governments-want-it-to-or-not/#41ed936f6fb5

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): April 15 (last revision on April 29)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,200,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 231,812
• Total Pending tests reported today: 2,791 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 1.8% (slowest growth seen to date)

Further declines…

Just about everything is in decline, so I’m not sure how long this report will be useful. Perhaps it just serves as a check on the news articles which still say the worst is ahead of us (it isn’t). The only places I’m modeling that are still growing are Texas and Virginia. If I get time this week I’ll dive into that to see if there are reporting issues, or they are actually still growing.

I’m still watching to see if we see any differences between states that reopen and those that do not, but I doubt we’ll see anything interesting, because early studies show no correlation between lockdown dates and disease progression, and now Forbes reports that “shelter in place” is over pretty much everywhere anyway, and people are starting to go about their business: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/05/01/apple-data-shows-shelter-in-place-is-ending-whether-governments-want-it-to-or-not/#41ed936f6fb5

In any event, I plan to continue these updates through the end of the week. If anything interesting is happening with the data, I’ll continue to produce them.

As always, feel free to send me your questions about my assumptions, methodology, or logistic modeling in general.

• Likely date of active case peak (Chalke modeling): April 10
• Likely date of peak deaths (IHME): April 15 (last revision on April 29)
• Short term projection for tomorrow: 1,180,000
• Total Test Results reported today: 237,019
• Total Pending tests reported today: 2,812 (very low)
• National reported case Growth Rate today: 2.3% (slowest growth seen to date)