Local COVID-19 updates

As of 4PM this afternoon, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is reporting 68 more deaths from COVID-19 (for a total of 6,372 to date), 1,013 new cases (for a total of 92,675) and 11,387 more tests reported (for a total of 532,373). The ratio of new cases to new test results is 8.9%.

Deaths are down again while tests are up compared to yesterday's numbers, but the other state-wide numbers went in a "bad" direction today (more cases and a higher positive test ratio). In addition, the seven-day weighted average of positive test rates (as reported on the "Dashboard of Public Health Indicators") is now being reported as 9.1% for the second day in a row, up from 9.0% on May 21. (Yesterday, the 5/22 positive test rate was reported as 9.3%; apparently they adjusted it down for some reason?)

The Imperial College London study I mentioned yesterday made it into the Boston Globe, in a story headlined "New study says Massachusetts coronavirus rates are much higher than reported and could rise steeply" - and it's worse than I first thought:
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I've also seen some online commentary to the effect that the Imperial College code is so badly written as to be unintelligble. I don't know enough of the R programming language to make a judgement one way or another; but I've seen an awful lot of badly written code in my day, and even badly written code can get the job done. (In fact, most of the code I've seen out there getting the job done is more-or-less a mess.) Or, as Grady Booch tweeted:

"Imperial College’s Covid-19 code is quite possibly the worst production code I have ever seen."

Me: "Hold my beer."

The town of Acton has yet to post an update today; yesterday at 9PM, the town reported 163 cumulative cases of COVID-19 in Acton with 57 individuals in isolation, 85 recovered and 21 fatalities; that's four more cases than the previous report.