Edmund Schweppe

I'm rebuilding my wall-o-text builder, in large part because the testing numbers keep dropping and I wanted to include seven-day averages, trends, etc. for tests as well as cases, deaths, percent-positive and hospitalizations.

(I also am working on trying to get wastewater numbers, but that code isn't quite ready for prime time yet.)

( Wall-o-text, new version )

Confirmed deaths and cases are down again, along with the current hospitalization counts and the percent-positive rate. Unfortunately, the test counts continue to drop as well; the seven-day average number of tests per day (5,812.9) is at the lowest level since April 6, 2020 (5,782.1), and it's only getting worse every week.

Last year at this time, with roughly the same deaths and hospitalization numbers, we were running around thirty eight thousand tests per day; at that test rate and today's percent-positive ratio, we'd be reporting over a thousand cases per day today. I really don't trust those case numbers anymore.

One other not particularly good milestone: this week, the state surpassed two thousand probable deaths from COVID.

There's a new note on today's state dashboard:

Please note: Today's dashboard (April 6, 2023) includes an update to the way COVID-19 deaths are defined for public health surveillance. The new definition is consistent with national recommendations and applies to deaths occurring as of April 1, 2023.

Pity they didn't say what the change was ...

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Statewide, the good news is a substantial drop in newly reported deaths (34 this week, 59 last week); of course, that might be due to whatever change they made in death reporting (as noted above). There was also a (smaller) drop in hospitalizations (310 this week, 315 last). There is also a good drop in newly reported confirmed cases, but the number of tests being performed continues to drop, and that's terrible. The CDC national case numbers continue to drop, but the death numbers actually are up from last week (1,773 deaths this week compared to 1,537 last week).

In today's report, Massachusetts averaged 6,411.29 tests per day over the latest seven days of reported data. That is the lowest that number has been since April 8, 2020, at the very beginnings of the pandemic, when the state averaged 6,360.86 tests per day over the previous seven days. (Back then, the supply of tests was still a huge issue, and the percent-positive rate was an atrocious 26.66%. Today's reported percent-positive rate is a mere 3.70% by comparison, which I will grant is far better.)

Last year at this time, the state was averaging around forty seven thousand tests per day, more than seven times higher than today's number. With a lower percent-positive rate (2.66% versus 3.70%), last year's seven-day confirmed case average was 922. Ain't no way there are really only a couple of hundred new cases per day statewide. Stay masked up, folks!

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Statewide, newly reported confirmed deaths and cases are both down from last week, as is the current hospitalization count and all four of the seven-day averages. The national numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also are trending in good directions. The CDC is reporting Community Levels of Low in all counties, and Community Transmission Levels of Moderate in twelve of the fourteen counties in Massachusetts.

Over, splendid news - with a a couple of exceptions. The first problem is that statewide test counts continue to drop as well. The state continues to set new records for the fewest new molecular tests; the seven-day average of tests by test date (6,779.57) hasn't been that low since April 9, 2020, back at the beginning of the pandemic. The state wasn't actually reporting that number back then, but based on the historical data in today's raw data download, the seven-day average of tests was 6,613.29. Back then, the problem was getting any tests at all; today, the issue is that so few people are getting official, lab-based tests.

The second thing I'm concerned about is the level of COVID in the wastewater. That level had been dropping fairly consistently for a few weeks, even though it was still substantially higher that either the 2021 or 2022 lows. However, the current MWRA data shows a bit of an upward trend, with the seven-day averages for both the north and south sides of the MWRA system back above 400 copies/mL for the first time in a few weeks. There's a lot of noise in that data, so I'm hesitant to leap to any conclusions. But any upward trend is not good.

(Note to self: I really need to get some automatic way of reading that wastewater data.)

In other discouraging but not terribly surprising news, the White House is going to disband their COVID-19 response team in May, once the public health emergencies expire:
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I wish I could say I was surprised. On the other hand, if the Biden Administration is giving up on extraordinary measures to protect folks from COVID, it sort of makes sense that they'd also give up on having the COVID-specific response office. (The Globe story does note that a new White House "pandemic response office" will be set up later this year.)

For now, though, the message seems clear: if you're still concerned about getting COVID, you're on your own.

May 11 won't be just the end of the Federal COVID public health emergency, it will be the end of the Massachusetts one as well:
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No word yet on what data, if any, the state will publicly release provide going forward.

Also conspicuously absent: any sort of plan to improve indoor air quality to reduce the spreading of COVID. Or any other airborne infectious agent, for that matter.

Feh.

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Statewide, newly reported deaths and cases are both down substantially compared to last week, as are the hospitalization counts and the four seven-day averages; this is all very good looking news. The one fly in the ointment, as far as I'm concerned, is that the newly reported test counts are also dropping. The state only reported 57,662 new molecular tests over the past week, the lowest seven-day figure in the entire dataset (starting June 1, 2020). The state has reported at least a hundred thousand tests per week every week from July 16, 2020 through November 10, 2022; the state has reported under seventy thousand tests per week every week since January 19, 2023. It seems pretty damn obvious to me that the state's official counts seriously underestimate the amount of COVID out there. Presumably, the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also suffer from the same undercounting of cases.

Meanwhile, the latest wastewater data from the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority is showing seven-day average counts of 466 and 416 copies/mL from the south and north sides as of March 7. Last March 7, those averages were 117 and 102 copies/mL, respectively. Four times as much COVID in the wastewater compared to a year ago, yet half the case rate? Gotta admit, that doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence in the current case numbers.

And the Boston Globe ran a couple of stories about long COVID on their website recently. Yesterday, they reported on a study from the United Kingdom showing that nearly sixty percent of long COVID patients had damage to at least one organ. Today, they've got a story from Bloomberg about a possible link between long COVID and the recent surge in disability among American women.

Yay. </sarcasm>

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Statewide, newly reported cases (both confirmed and probable) are down from last week, as are the current hospital COVID-19 census. However, newly reported confirmed deaths are up slightly from last week (87 vs 85), and newly reported probable deaths are nearly double those of last week (31 vs 17), which is not a good sign at all. Nationally, the CDC is reporting slight drops in deaths and cases. For the first time in I don't remember when, less than half the counties in the US have high levels of community transmission (this week, it's 1574 of 3222, which comes down to 48.85%). Massachusetts has four counties at substantial community transmission, and ten counties (including my own county of Middlesex) with moderate transmission levels.

In the way-back days before February 25, 2022, the CDC's mask guidance was based on community transmission, and getting down to moderate or low transmission levels meant that even high-risk folks didn't need to mask up as long as they were vaccinated. Nowadays, alas, so many folks do at-home tests that don't get reported to the states or the CDC, and thus the official case numbers badly undercount the actual levels of COVID out there. The latest wastewater numbers from the MWRA, with southside averages at 543 copies/mL and northside at 439, are far higher than the same date (Feb. 28) last year, when the southside average was 103 and the northside was 109, and way, way higher than the pandemic's low point in June 2021, when the southside average got down all the way to 9 copies/mL on June 27 and 28.

Still too damn much COVID for my taste.

Front-page story in today's Boston Globe: COVID pendulum swings among races

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I'm not sure that it's particularly good news that the COVID death rates among white folks are now higher than among minorities. And the fact that the BU study was based solely on death certificates really limits what conclusions can be drawn from the data.

Also, completely missing from this story: any steps that could be taken today to reduce COVID cases (and thus deaths). Like, say, indoor masking or ventilation improvements.

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Newly confirmed deaths and cases both down compared to last week, as are the newly reported probable deaths and cases, the hospitalization counts, and all four seven-day averages. The national death and case numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also down compared to last week. (There's something weird with the CDC API again; it looks like they're duplicating the community transmission dataset, which my code doesn't currently guard against.)

So, great news, right? Well, maybe. I still don't have a handy, automatic way of reading the wastewater data that the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority posts (in large part because they're only providing it in PDF format, and parsing that is a PITA). But last February the seven-day averages were still falling rapidly (from over ten thousand copies per milliliter the first week of January to less than one hundred copies per milliliter in early March). This winter's peak wastewater level was far lower (just over two thousand copies per milliliter on January 5), but the current averages are far higher than a year ago (currently 936 copies per milliliter on the southside, 765 on the northside), and they're not showing the consistently dropping trends that were happening this time last year.

Don't get me wrong; less COVID going around that earlier this winter is still good news. But I can't tell for certain how much of the case count drops are due to fewer people being infected versus fewer people getting tested, and that's worrisome.

President Biden told Congress today that he will end the COVID-19 national and public health emergency declarations on May 11:
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No cheers from me. COVID hasn't gone away, despite what Republican lawmakers may claim.

In fact, I'm reminded of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury cartoon from February 14, 1974 [1], in which President Nixon's energy czar solves the problem of the energy crisis ... by simply declaring that "The Energy Crisis Is Over!", and then basking in the cheering of the crowds.

[1] Yes, I'm old enough to remember that.

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

For once, the statewide trends are all positive; newly confirmed deaths and cases are both down from last week, as are the hospitalization counts and all four of the seven-day averages. The actual numbers are still much higher than I'd like to see (especially the percent-positive ratio of 10.86%), and the percentage of available non-ICU hospital beds is still too damn low at seven percent. Still, there's definite progress.

Also showing improvement are the numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both at a national level and specifically for the Commonwealth. In particular, new hospitalizations continue to drop statewide, and of Massachusetts' fourteen counties, one (Berkshire) has actually gotten down to a Community Level of Low. The rest of the state remains at Medium.

Stay masked up; this ain't over yet by a long shot. But there has been progress.

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Newly confirmed deaths continue to climb; this week's 142 deaths are the highest seven-day count since the state stopped daily reporting, and the seven-day average of 17.7 deaths per day is the highest reported since late February. However, cases, hospitalizations and percent-positive all dropped compared to last week. In fact, hospitalizations have dropped enough for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to move all fourteen counties in Massachusetts to a Community Level of Medium. (Last week, ten counties were at High, due to new hospitalizations breaking the twenty new hospitalizations per 100k population mark.) In even better news, there does appear to be a noticeable downturn in the virus levels reported in the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority wastewater samples.

Could we actually be past the peak of this winter's surge? It would be nice ...

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

First the seemingly good news: newly confirmed cases are actually down nearly ten percent from last week (8,327 versus 9,216). However, newly confirmed deaths are up nearly twenty percent (113 versus 96) and hospitalizations are up over twenty five percent (1,149 versus 908). The death figure breaks last week's record for the highest reported number since the state went to weekly counts, and is the first time since March 14 (at the tail end of last winter's Omicron surge) that the state reported more than a hundred deaths in a seven-day period. The hospital census is the highest reported since 1,161 were reported on February 10.

That's not what I think the really bad news is, though. The really bad news, in my not terribly humble opinion, is that the percent-positive ratio jumped above eleven percent, to 11.17%. That's the highest that's been since the state reported 11.40% on January 25, in the middle of that Omicron surge. More importantly to me, anything above ten percent means you aren't doing (or at least reporting) enough tests to put any faith in your case counts. So that nice drop in reported cases week-over-week isn't actually anything to celebrate.

Happy New Year?

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Gee, I guess we're getting our winter surge in COVID cases again this year, aren't we?

Today's 96 newly reported confirmed COVID deaths aren't just nearly twenty percent higher than last week's report (81) but are the highest reported since the state went to weekly reporting back in July. Newly confirmed cases are up almost ten percent to 9,216 (the highest that count has been since 9,646 were reported on August 4). Hospitalizations are up as well, with a current count of 908 COVID patients. All four seven-day averages are up; in particular, the percent-positive rate is up nearly a full percentage point compared to last week at 9.58%.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also reporting bad news regarding community transmission and risk levels; nationwide, 343 counties representing 17.38% of the population are at the highest risk level. Two of those counties (Hampden and Nantucket) are in Massachusetts. Eleven other counties in Massachusetts are at Medium risk level; only Berkshire County has a low enough rate of new hospitalizations to make it to Low level.

Not what I'd call tidings of comfort and joy. Alas.

( Wall-o-text, covering 7 days of data )

Well, fuck. Newly confirmed deaths statewide up twenty percent (to 76) from last week; newly confirmed cases up forty-eight percent (to 7,499), and current COVID hospitalizations up almost eighteen percent (to 766). All four seven-day averages are up compared to last week. In maybe-kinda-slightly good news, hospitals statewide are reporting slightly more total hospital beds (8,929 this week versus 8,899 last week), and the number of beds available is also up a tad (458 this week, 409 last week). Still, that's barely five percent of the non-ICU beds statewide actually being available

No good news on the national level either, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now reporting 299 counties (9.29%, representing 13.67% of the population) with High community level; that's up from 182 counties (5.66%, representing 4.84% of the population) last week. That's nearly triple the amount of the US population living in counties where the official CDC guidance is "everyone mask up indoors". Fortunately, for right now at least, none of those almost three hundred counties are in Massachusetts.

Remember yesterday, when I commented that the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority SARS-COV-2 wastewater levels just skyrocketed? The Boston Globe has now noticed that big jump:
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Of course, the probablility of a lame-duck Baker administration actualy demonstrating "policy leadership" is, for all intents and purposes, zero. (Feel free to prove me wrong, Governor.)