Corona-zona

 As we all know, a lot of people perished during the pandemic. Also as I have blogged before, Arizona is worst among all the states in that regard.  Now, stats are out from the CDC showing that Arizona had an average life expectancy of 76.3 years in 2020. That is below the national average of 77 (a figure that is itself down by two years because of the pandemic), and puts us at a rank of 33 among the states.  The worst is Mississippi at 71.9 years. That's probably at least partly because people there have to spend so much time typing the extra letters of their state's name over the course their lifetime. Arizona Public Health Association Will Humble noted  that this is the biggest drop in life expectancy since World War II. Then it was because of battlefield deaths. Today it's because of COVID-19 deaths, but as Humble points out, it's not only those deaths:  When you have a hospital system that’s overwhelmed, and ours was in crisis standards of care in July 2...

  Blake Masters is a candidate for Senate from Arizona. He is also a knuckle-dragging right wing extremist . During his primary campaign he claimed that black people are responsible for gun violence, said he thinks Ted Kaczynski had some great ideas, pushed the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, and complained about the immigrant "invasion." There's only one problem: The "full MAGA jacket" is not a good look for a general election where about two-thirds of Arizona voters are not Republican cult members. So he is furiously peddling toward the middle by focusing on "cultural issues"  (link could be paywalled). Chief among them is the government's pandemic response: They locked down and we can never forget this. These Democrats, they shut down their states. They shut down businesses. They shut down schools. They gave up on our children, of course, and they locked people inside for no reason. The Unabomber fanboy went on to complain that ...

  The recent Republican primary nominated people like Qrazy Qari Lake for governor and goat roper Mark Finchem for Secretary of State. This makes it tempting to conclude that they have drunk the Kool Aid and gone all-in to nominate the most extreme MAGA crazies they could find. But there are at least some exceptions. Ron Watkins (another goat roper) came in last in the District 2 primary.  They also rejected   Shiry Sapir (link may be paywalled) as their candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The latest results I can find show Tom Horne leading her by 9%. Sapir is a Scottsdale real estate broker/investor who became a "parent activist" after she became enraged at school closures and mask mandates during the pandemic. Besides wanting to expose kids to more disease, her ambition was also to prohibit a list of topics like slavery and LGBTQ rights from being taught in schools.  I'm unable to find Horne on-record about pandemic measures. But he  s...

  Yesterday, AzDHS released a blog post noting that most counties in Arizona are now above the CDC's "low" level.  They show a tiny map so I got a better one from the CDC : The six counties at the medium (yellow) level—Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Maricopa, Mohave, Pima—include the state's largest and comprise 85% of the population. The only difference between the low (green) and medium levels is a recommendation that "if you are at high risk for severe illness, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you need to wear a mask and take other precautions." Two counties—Apache and Navajo—are at the high level. At that level CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors in public.  Indian communities have been hit hard in the pandemic, but they have achieved much higher vaccination rates. A few months ago I blogged about how out of 15 counties in the state Apache County is number one (95% vaccinated), Navajo County is number four (75.3%), and Maricopa County comes i...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Statewide case rates have increased around 30%, close to what they did last week and less than they did the week before that. So although those are increasing, so far they appear not to be increasing at an accelerating rate.  The case graph even shows a little flattening over the last few weeks.   That is good. Maricopa County cases actually decreased a little. Deaths and hospital beds went up too, but not drastically. They remain at a fraction of their 2022 high values. Two of the wastewater locations had increases, with Yavapai posting another 2022 record (quite a few COVIDiots up there so this is not a huge shock). Mohave and Tempe wastewater values are down. All in all, it could be a lot worse—and it has been in the past. Hospital Beds Then and Now Last week I wondered how the hospital beds numbers in the current wave compared the the ones during previous waves. Fo...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Welp, last week I thought the early warning indicators might be leveling off but this week we see they are clearly headed back upward again. Hospitalizations are continuing to increase, but I don't think at the rate they were at the beginning of the year (I will try to compare the rates for next week's report). Case rates are up. Last week I did a post about how I'm seeing so many cases in my social circle, really more than at any other time in the pandemic.  In that post I cited a researcher who guestimated cases were eight times higher than what are being reported. Today I saw  this rticle about a not-yet-reviewed study that says they are 30 times higher! If that is true then we are at a case rate similar to January. And if so then the hospitalization rate looks pretty good. A couple of notes about the table: I changed to a Mayo Clinic site for the positive...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Just a couple of notes about the table. First, I have changed the one and four week absolute change values to percent increase/decrease. So for Maricopa County cases, the rate has increased by 8.9 from last week. If we divide by last week's rate and multiply by 100, we see that is a 52.1% increase. To me this is a little more meaningful than the raw number. Second, Sonora Quest has not updated its dashboard since I reported the values last week so I have not current or change values for that.  For what it's worth, Maricopa country reports  19% positivity, about the same as the last Sonora Quest report. Cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are all up. But those are lagging indicators, probably the result of what has happened over the last few weeks. The possibly good news is that (as just mentioned) positive tests may be stabilizing. Also wastewater signals have decrease...

  Last fall, I blogged about a discovery that deer were getting COVID-19 and spreading it among each other. This  story  from Monday (HT u/AhavaKhatool on Reddit) says that Arizona officials are testing zoo animals and wildlife for COVID-19.   [Aside: In the original post I wondered how deer could catch a virus from humans because deer are, y'know, not known for cuddling up to us. I've since read that they can get it from discarded food, or from captive deer that have closer contact with humans.] That news article is very brief. It talks about the wide range of animals being tested and claims they have not yet found any cases. Unfortunately, it doesn't say how many animals are being tested or what the sampling strategy is. I find it hard to believe they haven't found any yet and this makes me suspect they're not taking enough samples. Why? In this interview , scientists at Penn State said they were "gobsmacked" when 1200 of 2000 deer they tested in Pe...

Ugh, COVID-19 On Indefinite Repeat?   Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: A combination of wishful thinking and the desire to avoid being alarmist have so far kept me from saying we're in a fourth wave. But if it walks like a duck... This is the third week in a row we've seen week-over-week increases in cases and in the early warning indicators (positive tests and wastewater). Things I'm not happy to see are that, relative to the previous week's values:  Maricopa county cases have increased by 36% Statewide cases have increased by 31% Pima wastewater has increased 26% Yavapai wastewater has increased 94% and has set a new 2022 record Tempe wastewater is up a whopping 209%. Positive tests are only up a little, but up nonetheless. Public health officials caution that so many people are relying on home tests that are not reported, cases counts are significantly underestimated.  This could affect pos...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Everything is trending up except deaths and hospital beds. I expect those won't be too far behind. Also now there are increases over four weeks as well as over one week.  Though again—for context—we are not seeing values for anything as high as the worst this year, we are seeing upward trends now for three weeks, and the weekly change is increasing. This is almost identical  to what things looked like at the end of June and beginning of July last year when the Delta wave was cranking up. If this is a new wave, which it is starting to look like, we could be in for trouble. The Arizona health emergency declaration is cancelled. AzDHS has stopped reporting hospitalizations and is only reporting cases once a week. Federal pandemic money has dried up amid partisan squabbling , which means (among other things) no more free testing. Almost nobody is wearing masks anymo...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: This is not the data I was hoping to see today. Almost everything is up. Cases are up statewide, ending a three-week flat spot in the case graph. Cases have increased 25% in Maricopa County. Positive test percent is up, as is the wastewater signal in Pima County and Tempe (and again those values are lagged, from a week ago).  Deaths are up but those are lagging indicators that might be due to infections quite some time ago. Hospital beds are still flat, but those are lagging indicators too. The one bright spot is that Yavapai wastewater is down after a big spike over the last couple of weeks. Last week, there was no indication that the wastewater values corresponded to a lot of new cases.  Today the Yavapai County shows 25 new cases from May 3 to May 4, which is a different story. Unfortunately they don't provide historical numbers it's hard to tell if that's an...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: I have redesigned the layout of the table a little. I hope you like it. Compared to last week, more of the early warning indicators are up; however, most of the increases are not large and the absolute values are still very small compared to 2022 highs.  The exception to that is Yavapai County, where wastewater values set another 2022 record this week. I checked their website , and so far there's no indication that the wastewater levels have any corresponding case or hospitalization increases.  Overall, I see some things to keep an eye on here, but nothing to get worried about. Posts from the Last Seven Days you May Have Missed Arizona Set to Pass Two Pro-Pandemic Laws Happy Inject Yourself with Bleach Day!

Arizona is on course to pass two laws to make pandemics spread more efficiently (HT @willhumble_az on Twitter). They appear to be do-overs to compensate for the legislature's fail   at attaching similar measures to a budget bill last year. One bans mask requirements in schools.  H.B. 2616   Prohibits the state or a political subdivision, governmental entity, school district or charter school from requiring a person under 18 years of age to wear a mask or face covering without the express consent of the person's parent or guardian.   And that's it. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. Some virus could come along that spreads like measles and kills three-quarters of the people it infects. Schools would be powerless to prevent its spread. What breathtaking stupidity. The other, H.B. 2498   Prohibits the state or any political subdivision that receives or uses tax revenues (governmental entity) from requiring an Arizona resident to receive a vaccinatio...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Let's begin with some notes about the table. I have dropped the fully vaccinated percentage and rank among states. That has not changed basically since August and won't change by much more than +0.1% per week. As noted before, how that 0.1% keeps tricking in every week mystifies me. In place of those rows I have added ones for Sonora Quest positive test percentage, and—now that it looks like there is a reliable source of data—wastewater values for Tempe, Pima, and Yavapai counties. These are what experts agree we have left as early warning indicators. The caveat here is that these data are delayed. Sonora Quest posts every couple days (but did not today, so far), and the BioBot data are a week behind. So are the Tempe values, but they have not yet posted values from last week for some reason, so I'm not yet listing any current or change values for Tempe.   If Sonora...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday, and Pima/Yavapai counties and Tempe wastewater surveillance: In the table, everything is in the right direction, except a slight increase in COVID-19 hospital beds. Cases are now at their lowest point since a year ago. Despite my worries last week, it seems there is not a new wave brewing in Arizona...yet. Wastewater signals are, however, increasing in Pima and Yavapai counties—but decreasing in Tempe. Note that all the wastewater data are a week to ten days old.  That's too bad because this is the only thing we have that can provide an early warning. Here is an excellent explainer  from an epidemiologist (HT u/Soundvessel on Reddit) on why case rates are unreliable indicators now. Note especially the first graph showing a huge disconnect in the UK between current case counts and cases detected in random sampling (something I've noted before ) that started in January....

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday, as well as the most recent update of Pima County (it's back!) and Tempe wastewater surveillance: The table looks pretty good. The statewide case rate is down again, though looking at the case graph I note not back on the track is was on before last week's anomaly increase (due to adding old data). Death rates are up a little but only a fraction of a percent. Hospitalizations are level. The Pima County wastewater data has been restored at the CDC site. It's chart shows a kind of alarming increase of 1200% - 1800% over the last couple of weeks.  The same does not appear in the Tempe data. But if you look at their dashboard , which breaks out specific areas, there may be some action in the one covering South Tempe (my chart averages all areas).  Let's hope this is not an early warning of a new wave! Posts from the past seven days you may have missed New Variants ...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday, as well as the most recent update of Tempe wastewater surveillance: The most concerning aspects of the table and first graph is a rather large uptick in cases at the state level. Could this be the start of a new wave?  There is reason to worry because epidemiologists have warned that it is just a matter of time until the current wave in Europe makes its way over here. JP  Weiland, a scientist who does modeling of disease spread, tweeted a graph predicting that the decline in cases would bottom out this week and be followed by another period of increasing cases. I thought we were getting an early start on a new wave until I saw this tweet from Garret Archer, a data journalist who works for ABC 15. He was informed by AzDHS prior to this week's data dump that cases would go up due to a testing provider just now reporting some data that should have been reported i...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Everything continues on the downtrend, though cases are declining by smaller amounts every week (as we'd expect). Deaths are going down now, and hospital beds continue decreasing. Maricopa county now lists the community level as "low." Looking at the graph, it's hard to believe how bad things were just two months ago. Wastewater Fail As noted in Sunday's post , I had intended to add wastewater numbers to the table, and I did put the one-week and four-week values in there. However, the Pima county numbers have vanished from the CDC site , including historical ones. It's odd because they were there just four days ago. I've sent an email to the dataset owner about this, but have not received a response.   It's not clear to me when Tempe updates their dashboard . It's currently showing data from two weeks ago, just like it was doing on Sunday...