Corona-zona

A new study is out comparing excess death rates of Democrats and Republicans during the pandemic. The results are not good for Republicans. The Republican party has lost its collective mind and (among other things) is rife with anti-vaxxers.  Consequently, its members are the most resistant political group to getting vaccinated, with 30% saying they plan to never get vaccinated. Of those that are vaccinated, only 11% say they plan to get the new bivalent booster anytime soon.  It is abundantly clear—at least for those willing to look at evidence—that vaccines are safe and effective. They keep people from getting seriously ill and dying.  So it comes as no surprise that researchers have found more excess deaths in a party whose members refuse to accept this. It's hard not to think of this as natural selection. "Excess deaths" are determined by comparing death rates during normal periods with those observed during some special period like a pandemic. It's how public h...

 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...

A story out of the UK reveals an irony about the Omicron variant. It is less deadly , but has killed more people than Delta. How can both things be true? It's a numbers game.  Delta was more likely to put you in the hospital or kill you. But Omicron is a lot more contagious, with more ability to evade antibodies from vaccinations or previous infection.  So Omicron and its sub-variants are causing more infections. About a month ago I blogged about how seemingly all of my friends were getting it. That has continued. Because it is causing more infections, it is causing more deaths even though it is less pathogenic. A virologist in the article put it this way:  “To use a shooting analogy, Delta is like a sniper rifle and Omicron is more like someone with an Uzi (machine gun). So each individual shot might be less likely to kill someone but there’s a lot more bullets." In the U.S., it has been especially bad in rural areas. Experts attribute that to low vaccination rates. M...

In an earlier blog , I summarized some information on why so many vaxxed people were getting infected and what immunity was doing to those at-home antigen texts.  In that post I said: "Omicron cousins are less likely to cause severe disease, even if they are more contagious." In response to that @SuziSuperKitn on Twitter sent me this link to a Reuters article about a month ago, that reported on a preprint study looking at the question of whether Omicron in its various flavors is really less pathogenic. Note that this is a preprint, which means it has still not been reviewed. It is not unusual for the peer review process to turn-up issues with the study methodology that invalidate the study or require modifications. But this one includes authors from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Med School. Such researchers don't usually do shoddy studies so it's a good bet it does not have fatal flaws. What they found, in a nutshell, is that if you just compare mortali...

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...

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...

The other day I ran across this article commemorating the dubious milestone of one million U.S. deaths from the pandemic. A table in the article lists the "preventable deaths per million adults" for each state. I counted down to the Arizona slot, finding us 36th places down from the best. Wait a minute, I thought, isn't that the same ranking Arizona had among states for percent fully vaccinated the last time I calculated it? Why yes, yes it is . Is that a coincidence, or do these preventable death numbers line-up with vaccination percentages for all the states? To find out, I took the vaccination percentages on April 13th (data from JHU Dashboard  with Arizona rate corrected) and plotted those against the preventable deaths numbers in the above article: That, dear readers, is a very strong correlation (the outlier case on the right is DC). Like, you rarely see correlations that large for anything involving human behavior. The percent vaccinated accounts for about two-th...

  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!

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...

  Chinese Police Parade Pandemic Violators (2021) You have probably seen the video images of desperate residents of Shanghai , China. The entire city has been placed under quarantine for weeks in an attempt to stem a COVID-19 wave there.  According to reports, people are not allowed to leave their residences for any reason—not to shop, walk pets, fill prescriptions, get medical treatment—and they are arrested if they do.  There is no end in sight and people are running short on food and medicine. I have been surprised that the Chinese government would allow images like these to circulate. Normally they maintain tight control over the narrative, so they must intend for these scenes to get out into the wild. A guy writing an op-ed at Forbes  says the Shanghai shutdown is strategic, but for non-pandemic reasons. The idea, he claims, is to squeeze Western economies by shutting down China's biggest manufacturing and shipping port.  Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia ...

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...