Local COVID-19 updates
May. 24th, 2020 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edschweppeAs 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:
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:
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:
A new model from British researchers studying the spread of the novel coronavirus offers a dire picture of how many more Massachusetts residents could die of COVID-19 and suggests the outbreak was much wider than the confirmed case count.
The estimates from Imperial College London said the virus has already infected about 13 percent of the state’s 6.9 million residents. That’s about 896,000 people, far more than the 92,675 confirmed COVID-19 cases reported by the state on Saturday but significantly short of the threshold for herd immunity. Researchers at John Hopkins University estimate 70 percent of the population will need immunity to have herd protection from the virus.
Massachusetts ranks behind only three other states — New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut,— where the virus has infected a larger percent of their state population, the researchers said.
"Over 80 percent of [Massachusetts] hasn’t been infected yet," said Samuel Scarpino, an epidemiologist at Northeastern University. "We’re going to be susceptible to another wave of infections."
The model estimated about 96,000 Massachusetts residents were infectious as of May 17 and could spread the virus to others. Only Illinois had a higher number of infectious residents, according to the researchers, who prepared estimates for every state.
The outbreak in Massachusetts is at a crucial crossroads, according to the model, and the daily number of deaths could increase by more than twofold if residents push too quickly to resume their pre-pandemic lifestyle.
"In Massachusetts, you are on a knife’s edge," said Seth Flaxman, a senior lecturer at Imperial College London, in an e-mail Saturday.
The state is among two dozen nationwide with a reproduction number greater than one, which refers to the average number of secondary infections caused by an infected person. It is commonly referred to as "R."
"If Massachusetts is able to get R below 1 and keep it below 1 then the epidemic will die out. But if R goes above 1 then the epidemic is not under control; it will grow and in 2 to 3 weeks we will see deaths starting to increase," Flaxman wrote.
A reproduction number above one in 24 states shows "the epidemic is not under control in much of the US," the researchers wrote.
[ ... ]
The Imperial College London model examines how high the daily death count could go in Massachusetts as residents begin to leave their homes more frequently and move around the region.
If mobility returns to 20 percent of what it was before the pandemic, COVID-19 could kill about 500 people daily by the end of June, the researchers said. If mobility increases to 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels, the virus could claim the lives of about 800 people each day, the model said.
[ ... ]
Governor Charlie Baker’s administration didn’t respond directly Saturday to Globe questions about the model.
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."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.
Me: "Hold my beer."