re: Daily COVID Updated as of 11/2/20 8:00 PM

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Buckeye, I’m seeing some chatter that there are signs of a plateau in Arizona.

Are you seeing anything in the data to suggest Arizona may be cresting?

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Yes. Cases appeared to have peaked recently, and the below site which estimates/projects infections and deaths, has the peak infections about a week ago.

Now deaths will probably peak next week (or the following weak at the latest), but of course when it gets reported (lags, Arizona has serious daily reporting seasonality, etc.) provides more uncertainty as to when we’ll see that. In addition, the age of infections has increased, and particularly the spread of infections within long-term care facilities has increased more in Arizona (at least Phoenix metro) than anywhere else, so it’s possible that peak deaths may lag more if those more likely to die have been disproportionately infected later on.

But all in all, it does seem like infections have peaked, so that’s a start. Nationally though, it appears it appears we still have a few weeks to go, if not more.

AZ AI Estimates and Projections

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but since they are reported to the local health agency (who then contacts all positive cases), it does not appear that he was counted twice (possible but unlikely).

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I believe the contact tracing is separate from the positive cases reported by the labs. At least it’s that way here in Missouri. The labs report their information to the state and then the state has to go back in and try to remove duplicates.

Iowa and Kansas, at least

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If Florida wasn't spiking now, this would be over. And no one can reasonably believe Florida's data right now. It's like the opposite of China's data.

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I think there data issues have either been overestimated and/or misinterpreted for a couple of reasons:

1. When tracking multiple metrics (e.g., cases, positivity rates, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, deaths, etc.) in real time gathered from multiple reporting agencies and mechanisms with multiple lags in reporting across a large population with rapidly changing and increasing data, there are bound to be errors. This is just a function of data in general.

2. People appear to be really digging into the data looking for issues/errors, which despite claims to the contrary previously, means that the data is transparent enough to actually find errors. Ironically, the best way to prevent people finding errors is to be more non-transparent with the data. So if anything, this is probably better than the alternative.

3.One of the biggest issues appears to be "positivity rates," but it appears positive cases are reported more quickly than negative cases (understandably). Therefore, with cases rising, positivity rates probably rising in reality, and these lags, I think we're likely to see funky positivity rates until they can be corrected.

But what bothers me is that while there are people with an agenda who are legitimately trying to find issues to get them corrected and/or clarification, there is a large contingent of individuals who have become quite popular and become authoritative figures in some circles, who are looking for issues when the data aren't supporting their agenda (e.g., trending upward) to discredit the data in their entirety; however, they aren't doing the same when the data is supports their agenda (e.g., trending downward).

They're presenting themselves as "fighting against the irrational fear porn with objectivity, data, and science," but they're fighting it with equally irrationally and overconfident takes, not objective and data driven science.

In fact, there is one person in particular, an OSU sport podcaster" whose "analysis" appears to have been referenced (either directly, or through word of mouth) by "808bass" in this thread regarding the reporting of deaths, and the chart he's using was posted in the OT thread a few hours ago.

While I admit his data gathering and visualization skills are pretty decent (I would hire someone with those skills as a research assistant), his analysis and interpretations are increasingly problematic either because he's increasingly dishonest and/or just incompetent. Yet, he's gaining thousands of twitter followers each week, being interviewed by radio stations on the other side of the country and presented as a "data analyst," and he even got a shoutout by a quest on the Laura Inghraham show the other night.

In other words, he's becoming an authoritative figure regarding the data and science, and while others have said that he can't comment on science at all since he's not a scientist (he's got into some major arguments with multiple OSU beat writers for major publications) and appears that he's just a podcaster who may do some uber driving on the side I don't think that is this case.

That being said, as someone with a PhD, a Master's in statistics, and whose actually done consulting research work for a large healthcare organization, I've tried to offer some alternative explanations and/or implored him to be cautious about the confidence of his conclusions regarding the data, since my education and experience has not made me an expert except for being an expert on all that we dont' know and the fact that the world is far from certain. But instead (when he doesn't ignore me), insulted me, and told me that I don't know what I'm talking about (even when I present him with evidence). But that unscientific confidence seems to have given him expert influence as a data scientists while I'm complaining on tigerdroppings.

O well. That being said, this makes me appreciate chrome's work in this thread because it's not only great work in general, if non-scientists/experts and their work should be given credibility, it should be chrome and his work.

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NYC is up to around 40% for people with antibodies. Not enough for herd immunity, but it's getting there.

The city looks half abandoned. People are fleeing the virus, the riots and Comrade de Blasio's crime wave.

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i mean de blasio sucks but its not that bad up here. were able to get out a a bit now and do some outdoor dining.

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Now I'm sure my FIL's scenario where he was tested multiple times (with multiple positives) before he was known to be positive is not common,

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I think this is actually reasonably common - where there are multiple tests on the same person. Positives and negatives.

An example: if a person is being discharged from the hospital to a nursing home, they had to have two negative tests in order to be accepted by the home. If a person tests positive once and they’re symptom free, the hospitals (probably rightly) will surmise it’s a false positive and get two more negatives.

So my friend initially had a negative test with all the symptoms. So he had a second test which came back positive. Then had to have two negatives to discharge from the hospital.

So you have four tests, three negatives and one positive, for one positive case. And those tests were done by different labs. The second by the state lab. The last two by a contracted lab. There’s no way they could remove those results from their results because they can’t know the other results exist.

It is complicated data. And it makes the transparency of it all a bit wild.

This is the link to the COVID-19 tracker that I have created and shared on Google Drive.
If you want to view the shared sheet, follow this link COVID-19 Tracker
If you want to download a copy of this sheet and manipulate it follow this link Downloadable COVID-19 Tracker
The source for the data is from https://covidtracking.com/data/















New Cases by State


New Deaths by State


7-day average growth rate of new cases

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When you go to get a test are you entering your information digitally on the spot?

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This.

Georgia is in the same boat. Mentioned this earlier in the week that we'd know for sure by today if July 1 was the new peak in Georgia, and it definitely is. Still not seeing an explosion in deaths, been pretty consistent for several weeks. We're still headline reporting 3500-4000 cases a day, but a substantial portion are being backdated to July 1 +/- 5 days.

I think that’s it. It’s a far longer tail than anyone wants. But it doesn’t look like a new peak for the country.