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| Source: CDC |
Introductions
As of today, I'm moving my weekly coronavirus updates to here -- my writing blog, because I got tired of the Facebook interface and its boring lack of pictures, etc. But don't worry, Facebook followers ... I will still post a link on my wall to keep you informed.
For those of you following this blog -- you can see prior coronavirus newsletters with this Facebook search string I've put together.
Why do I do this? Because I'm concerned. I don't think the general public is sufficiently informed on all matters coronavirus, and I believe that if we all fully understood what was going on, we'd all know how to work together to fight this virus and end it for good.
I'm an actuary (associate), a modeler, a mathematician, a programmer, a logistician, a process improver, and a staunch follower of science. Part of my learning included how to handle medical related data, so even though I'm not an epidemiologist, I feel that I can offer a unique perspective on this outbreak, and explain things in a way that you may understand.
Personal Update
In earlier newsletters, I've mentioned that over the past month and a half I've been experiencing COVID-19 related symptoms off and on -- except no fever, and no loss of taste (though there is sometimes a funny taste). I got tested back in June and received a NEGATIVE result. And I got tested again last week at my doctor's request. After five days, I got back another NEGATIVE result. Both of these tests appear to be the same "emergency" or "quick" test and not the official FDA-approved test, though I'm not sure what the difference is.
I'm still frustrated because I don't know my current situation. I highly suspect I caught the virus in late May or early June, waited too long to get tested and had already fought the virus, and now may be fighting the remains ... randomly stored RNA fragments able to re-trigger symptoms.
Or it could a simple bronchitis infection. Either way, I'm having difficulty getting in to see a doctor, and I'm giving up because it's just not that bad. It's not worth the headache, and I'll revisit if I ever get a fever. Though, I do plan on getting an antibody test shortly.
I'm not happy about having to wait five days for the results this last time, and I hear some people are waiting for weeks for results. This tells me that we've reached our capacity of testing again, and as "actual" cases continue to rise, we won't see them in the official counts, because we can't keep up. And how can we effectively fight what we can't measure?
Excess Death Tool
I'm often asked: why do people care so much about COVID-19 deaths? Why don't people get upset with influenza deaths? Aren't these people dying from secondary conditions and not really from COVID-19? How can we trust the official numbers when hospitals are mis-categorizing unrelated deaths as COVID-19? Or how can we trust hospital counts when they have incentives to pad COVID-19 hospitalization/death counts?
For me, excess death statistics provide the answer to all these questions. Excess deaths = "Total actual deaths from all causes" minus "Total expected average deaths from all causes." What's nice about this metric is that it is very difficult to manipulate. It doesn't matter if a death is categorized as COVID-19 or as a heart-attack, because all deaths are the same. Then you can look at the big picture and ask "did a significant event occur at this time?"
In the graph at the top of this post, I've grabbed a screen shot from the CDC's US excess death tool for the City of New York. The blue bars show weekly total number of deaths from all causes for NYC for 2017 through today. The orange curve is an expected death threshold -- if the blue bars cross the orange line, deaths are noticeably higher than usual and an event is said to have occurred. These are marked with red plus signs above each breach of the threshold.
Note one breach happens the first month of 2018. This was a noticeably bad flu season for NYC -- and possibly some extra deaths due to a blizzard. It looks like a small bump, but it was enough to stress the hospital system.
And then look at 2020. Starting at the end of March, there is a very large breach -- a ridiculously high number of deaths not seen in NYC in decades. Not even the WTC attacks in 2001 had this many excess deaths. And the Swine Flu of 2009 showed practically no excess at all in NYC. (You can see 2001 and 2009 in the graph from this NY Times article.)
So, what can we say about the current COVID-19 pandemic? Is it "real"? Should we be concerned with so many deaths happening at the same time? Would it be good to continue trying to avoid further deaths?
I'll try to embed the tool here, but I'm not sure how successful it'll be on your device. Should it fail, just click on the picture at the very top of this post and it'll take you to the CDC Excess Death page. With this tool, you can select any state and a couple of selected cities, and see what kind of excess deaths have been happening. My home state of Georgia has a pretty sizable excess. My current state of North Carolina -- not so much. Utah -- hardly much at all except for the last couple of weeks. Arizona and Texas -- they were doing well except for the last month or two.
Conspiracy Entrenchers
Yet still, the conspiracies continue even today. I wrote about this a couple of days ago. Usually, I think these conspiracies are cute and easy to ignore, but unfortunately, this time it's leading many people to behave contrary to what needs to happen to eradicate the virus. This time believing the conspiracies is dangerous not only to the believers, but also everyone else ... not just the deaths, but also the destruction of jobs and the weakening of our economy.
More and more, I've witnessed many people, including friends, entrenching themselves in these dangerous beliefs. And over this past week or so, I've noticed an uptick of sincere pleas from these entrenchers, expressing a desire to be able to express their increasingly unpopular beliefs, to exercise their First Amendment rights, and to be respected instead of ridiculed. "Who is to say your science is better than my science?"
After a quick experiment, I was able to determine that these entrenchers' plea for respect seems to go only one way. They want respect for their ideas while maintaining the right to ridicule other people and their seemingly errant thoughts ... absolutely no attempt at all to try and understand opposing points of view.
And they all seem to agree on one thing: "I am never ever going to wear a mask." And so much anger. I'm sure you've seen videos of people attacking mask displays in the store and even other people wearing masks.
And I wonder ... how do people get like this? How can so many people turn against simple science and math, and simple strategies that have already helped several countries to nearly eradicate this virus?
I know a lot of it is Trump's fault and his lack of clear leadership ... sending mixed messages to the public, confusing even the knowledgable, and helping to create a perfect environment for conspiracy theories to thrive.
I also know that foreign actors are using our social media to feed us AI-generated posts scientifically engineered to maximize the division of our nation over this past decade. This is not just my own conspiracy theory, but rather a very well-documented development (of which I'll dedicate a post at a later time).
Also, ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal news sources have both contributed to this entrenchment, and I'm growing increasingly tired of watching all this intentional division.
We, the people, lose. I know a lot of these entrenchers personally, and they're all good people. I don't want to lose friends over this. As always, my goal is to get people to work together to fight this virus.
I've learned the hard way that shaming and pointing out logical errors is not the best way to convince these people to see the light ... rather, it seems to push them further into entrenchment.
When I'm diplomatic, my "contrary" friends and family react positively. They come to learn things from me, and I come to learn things from them (I've even included some of their ideas in these newsletters), and we all come out on the other end feeling more informed on the virus. I've watched several of these friends come to the point of: "Okay -- I'll put on a stupid mask, but I'm not going to like it."
But recently, I feel increasingly that we're running out of time and it's becoming more difficult to be diplomatic ... it feels so slow a process. Still, non-diplomatic solutions don't work -- so we must do our best not to shame others, and we should keep up the mutual respect, while not fearing to remind them to respect our ideas in return.
Trump Update
Which brings me to a very important message to my liberal friends. I know that Trump has been very disappointing in his leadership as per COVID-19. But back in April, he was really trying. After a couple of months of downplaying the epidemic, he helped to encourage lockdowns, and to help us through a most difficult time. But the liberal-leaning actors continued to ridicule Trump.
Right about the time Trump was ridiculed for suggesting using irradiation and injecting detergents to fight the virus, he stopped his daily briefings. He stopped talking to Fauci, and he went right back to downplaying the virus, and pushing for everything to open back up, which in hindsight was a disaster.
However, as of a couple of days ago, Trump has started his briefings again, and has told us we need to do the patriotic thing and put on our masks. Difficult times are coming again.
And please, please, please, please ... I beg of you ... we need to reinforce Trump when he's doing the right thing. We don't want Trump to revert to downplay mode, and if that happens, I'll guarantee you that his base will continue to refuse to wear masks, and deaths will continue to rise.
It's okay to pat Trump on the back and reinforce his good decisions ... then he'll see that he's finally doing a good job, and he'll continue ... and then perhaps his base will be convinced in time so that we can all finally get on the same page and fight this virus together.
If the Democrats can take the higher road, set aside politics, and work with Trump on this, I think we could have a chance at succeeding. If we instead wait four months for a hopeful changing of the guard, it could likely be too late to stop what's coming next.
Hotspots
And finally, to end ... I'd like to report that the New York Times has finally updated their hotspot map coloring scheme to now show the highest rates of new cases per capita, so now it's much easier to see where the bad spots are. And they appear to still be mainly in the South. Louisiana looks pretty bad now, and practically the whole coast of the Gulf. South Carolina is still pretty bad, and North Carolina has medium growth. California, Arizona, Idaho, Washington still look to have some strong hotspots going.
You can click the picture below to see the whole New York Times dashboard.
Thanks for reading ... and stay safe!
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