Corona-zona

  The public health community is wringing its hands over a new variant. New variants take over periodically because they evolve better fitness and this allows them to supplant older variants. We've learned by now what trouble this can cause.  Delta took hold in summer/fall 2021. It was more infectious and caused more serious disease, and it killed a whole bunch of people. Then about a year ago Omicron started up. It caused less serious disease but was more contagious so it also caused a big surge that killed a lot of people. Since the Omicron wave died down, people who worry about these things have been waiting for a new variant to pop up and renew our misery.  First it was BA.4 and BA.5. Then it was BA.2.75.2 . When that didn't cause the expected problems, attention shifted to BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 . The new boogeyman is another son-of-omicron dubbed XBB.1.5. This one is concerning because of how quickly it is taking over. According to a guy at Northwestern University who tra...

  Today's geek-out post is inspired by an NPR Morning Edition   story  yesterday about what is likely a new infection wave gathering steam in Europe. Here is a chart from Our World in Data: The story notes that we don't know yet whether this increase is associated with new variants, such as BA.2.75.2 that I was fretting about a week ago. I checked the EU Dashboard and indeed it looks like the OG Omicron is still dominant in France, Germany, and Italy (99.8% - 100% of sequences).  That's odd because BA.5 is dominant here, with BA.4.6 close behind, and zero percent cases of OG Omicron (BA.1.1 or BA.1.1.529) according to the CDC : I won't be losing any sleep over a new wave just yet. Current modeling shows that even in a scenario where there is a new variant it shouldn't get too bad depending on how many people get the new bivalent booster: The dotted line is the actual observations, and we have been beating the expected numbers for the last couple of months. The so...

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...

  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...

Wow, I don't know about you, but lots and lots of my friends & acquaintances have been getting infected this spring. To a person these folks are fully vaxxed and boosted and they have respect for the virus—i.e., they are not COVIDiots who take risks with it. I work with a number of people who are in their late 20s to early 30s. Since January something like half of them have tested positive. Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR and his family of three have gotten it twice. Once was during international travel and this delayed their ability to return home because of strict quarantine regulations in Singapore. I know another family who had two kids under 5 years old back in January, and the whole household got infected. They now have three kids under 5 and had to cancel a planned Memorial Day party because they all got infected again. Then a friend who is 75 attended a wedding where all those in attendance were supposed to have been vaccinated and boosted. He came down with a m...

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...

  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...

  A recent piece in The Atlantic suggests we could be in the middle of an "invisible" wave . It puts me in mind of the tree-fall-in-the-forest conundrum.   In the U.S. our case surveillance systems have always been crappy because they rely on self-selected participation rather than random sampling. The two approaches can give very different pictures of infection rates.  Worse, now we are not even getting an accurate count of the self-selected tests. This is for two reasons . First, people are having milder cases and they may not even recognize they have COVID-19, or may not be seeing physicians if they do.  Second, people have ready access to in-home antigen tests. I have noted before that those are of questionable accuracy , especially for asymptomatic infections. So people could have a false negative test and go about their business unknowingly spreading the disease.   But even if they get a positive test there is (as far as I know) no way to repor...

  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 ...

  These last few weeks have been a relief. I've reduced masking a lot and have felt better about going out to eat (though still only outside).   Still, I've been waiting for the BA.2/"stealh" Omicron shoe to drop and force me back into January-style behavior again. Yesterday the CDC said it makes up almost three quarters of the variants detected in infected people in the U.S.  It is spreading rapidly in China , but that is different from the U.S. because so few people in China have been infected or vaccinated with an effective vaccine. On the other hand it is spreading like wildfire in Europe, which is not so different from the U.S.  Experts are thinking it probably won't cause a severe wave here in the U.S. I sure hope they are right. Unfortunately there are other variants brewing. They are recombinant strains, produced when two variants infect the same person and share generic material. One is called XE. It is a combo of BA.1 and its cousin BA.2, and i...

  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...