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Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Growth in ICU admissions reached a new low on 4/23.
The plan for Ohio's May 1 phase-out of "stay-at-home" orders were supposed to be released on 4/23, but Gov. Mike DeWine said the plan's release will be delayed to Monday, April 27.
<<Full details are coming, DeWine promised. He said he wants Ohioans to be confident about going back out.
Asked about the delay in providing details, DeWine said, “We’re trying to get things right and trying to see exactly where we are with testing...we’re just not quite ready to do it (reopen)….
The governor said he did not want to partially reopen Ohio and then revert to another closure if virus cases spike.>>
Most of the 4/23 briefing was turned over to Dr. Mark Weir, director of the Ecology, Epidemiology and Population Health Program at The Ohio State University's Infectious Diseases Institute.
Weir explained how Ohio is developing its reopening plan:
<<Weir explained the modeling developed by Ohio State, which ODH and the DeWine administration are using to shape the state’s response, uses mathematics in an attempt to replicate these conditions in the real world. One of the reasons Ohio will move slowly in reopening the economy, he said, is so researchers can see if cases go up when certain businesses reopen, and adjust rules and guidelines accordingly....
"All of these decisions that are decisions made under uncertainty with limited information.">>
Also, as described in the above link, DeWine said that reopening hospital procedures, including surgeries, must be limited to essential services given a continued lack of personal protection equipment.
<<"We're not ready for the entire health care system to instantly turn back on," DeWine said.>>
Dr. Weir in his presentation went into great detail about how the COVID-19 is spread, and how "interventions" such as hand washing and social distancing interrupted transmission.
<<Weir repeated the consensus that COVID-19 is primarily spread through droplets from coughing or sneezing, but went more in-depth as to how the germs can infect others through cross contamination on certain surfaces....
Dr. Weir: When you cough or sneeze, droplets spread through the air. The light droplets will go farther, and the heavier ones will fall from the air. With #COVID19 you are spreading various-sized particles that will travel 6-10 feet based on environmental circumstances.>>
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
On 4/24, all three growth metrics for the first time on a WEEKDAY were 5% or lower. This also occurred on 4/12 (Easter Sunday) and 4/19, but statistical reporting may be delayed on Sundays.
At the daily COVID-19 briefing, Gov. Mike DeWine said daily testing will greatly increase by the end of May, perhaps as much as five-fold.
DeWine said the jump in testing will be made possible by two Ohio manufacturers who will alleviate the state's shortages of nasal swabs and reagents. The shortages have capped the full utilization of Ohio's testing capacity.
<<The state’s hospitals and labs have been processing between 2,000 and 4,000 COVID-19 tests daily. Efforts to ramp up testing have been hampered by a shortage of testing supplies, specifically reagent and swabs....
A new reagent recipe from Thermo Fisher Scientific received federal approval earlier this week. And ROE Dental Lab in Cleveland committed to make 1 million swabs. The company will bring 100 employees back to help 3D print the swabs.
DeWine said that increases Ohio’s capacity to 7,200 per day, growing to 15,000 per day by May 6 and 22,000 by May 27. DeWine said the additional tests will help health officials focus on nursing homes and other congregate settings as well as grocery stores and essential manufacturing sites.>>
DeWine said COVID-19 tests still would require orders from authorized medical professionals. It's not clear if contact tracers could order the tests, nor who would pay for the tests if the patient was unable to do so.
DeWine also said during the briefing that 844 prisoners have been released to date under the state's COVID-19 early release program. The program attempts to alleviate over-crowding in state prisons which have been the scenes of some of the largest COVID-19 clusters in the nation.
<<Blanket testing has only been conducted at some of the state prisons hardest-hit by the pandemic. At the Marion Correction Institution, more than 80 percent of the prison’s approximately 2,500 inmates have tested positive -- though 95 percent of those who tested positive displayed no symptoms.>>
It's not clear if released prisoners have been quarantined to prevent infections of new contacts. Persons who have had contacts with infected individuals may not immediately test positive for the COVID-19 virus.
DeWine said Ohio would drastically increase its contact tracing work force in an effort to isolate asymptomatic carriers of the virus and reduce the state's infection rate.
<<Ohio plans to bring on about 1,750 people to trace the contacts of patients who have tested positive for COVID-19, DeWine said. It will take such a large workforce to trace the contacts of more than 15,000 COVID-19 cases, Ohio Medical Director Dr. Mark Hurst said at Friday’s news conference.>>
It's not clear if contacts of infected individuals will receive tests, or if they will be asked to self-quarantine in the absence of any positive COVID-19 test.
Washington state plans to field a "brigade" of 1,500 contact tracers, just 250 fewer than in Ohio, even though Washington's population (7.6 million) is 65 percent that of Ohio (11.7 million). Washington plans to use 500 National Guardsmen in its effort. Unlike in Ohio, hospitalizations in Washington already are dropping.
These facts suggest that Ohio likely has many more undiscovered COVID-19 positive cases than in Washington and should need a much larger contact tracing work force than needed in Washington.
DeWine apparently didn't discuss who would pay for any needed additional public health workers in Ohio counties where budgets have been crippled by the COVID-19 crisis.
Not all individuals will willingly self-quarantine. Korea has used cellphone tracking to identify violators and many nations maintain quarantine facilities, such as in unused hotels, for individuals unable or unwilling to self quarantine.
As individuals with active COVID-19 infections can deteriorate rapidly, perhaps not even realizing the danger given unique and little understood characteristics of the COVID-19 virus, those who are self-quarantining perhaps should be provided with oximeters. It sounds as if the federal government or Ohio need to ramp up production of these devices which have disappeared from pharmacy shelves. (See the NPR article linked above.)
<<There are some dangers in this long-distance monitoring. Doctors in New York have noticed that homebound COVID-19 patients sometimes become hypoxic without realizing the severity of their condition until it's too late. It's a danger that can be averted with a pulse oximeter, a simple device for measuring oxygen levels in the blood. The devices are relatively cheap, but they've disappeared from pharmacy shelves. Wiesman says that's something Washington's isolation plan hasn't taken into consideration.>>
Washington's governor says its planned contact tracing program will need 20-30,000 tests per day. Ohio would need many more given its larger population. Even under Ohio's planned ramp-up of testing, capacity will be much less than is needed.
Some persons self-isolating also may need services, such as grocery delivery. Given the financial stress throughout the state, in many cases, Ohio or counties may need to provide these services.
There's no cheap way to put the COVID-19 genie back in the bottle.
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
The growth rates on either 4/12 and 4/19 either tied or were lower than today's low growth rates. Both 4/12 and 4/19 were Sundays, and reporting may have been delayed.
The 5-day period ended 4/24 marked the first time that none of the three metric growth rates showed any improvement in the five-day, compounded growth rate. For the first time, one metric, ICU admissions, actually showed an increased five-day growth rate, albeit by only 1 percentage point.
There was no DeWine administration COVID-19 briefing on Saturday, 4/25.
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
The 4/26 daily growth in hospitalizations and ICU admissions tied the lows on 4/19. Both are Sundays, and statistical reporting may be delayed. The 4/26 growth rate in deaths was higher than the <1 percent reported on 4/12, Easter Sunday.
There was no DeWine administration COVID-19 briefing on Sunday, 4/26.
The Columbus Dispatch today reprinted an article from its sister publication, USA Today, explaining how death certificates in the U.S. are widely deficient.
<<One in 3 death certificates were wrong before coronavirus. It's about to get even worse.
As the United States struggles to track coronavirus fatalities amid spotty testing, delayed lab results and inconsistent reporting standards, a more insidious problem could thwart the country's quest for an accurate death toll.
Up to 1 in 3 death certificates nationwide were wrong before COVID-19, Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, said in an interview with the USA TODAY Network....
“COVID-19,” he said, “is impacting the system at a time when it’s already in a crisis with a shortage of people doing the work.”
Many medical examiners and coroners refuse to attribute a death to COVID-19 without a positive test before the person died. Some medical examiners do postmortem testing if they have the means. But tests are in short supply, so that’s not always possible.>>
New York City initially didn't report at-home deaths likely caused by COVID-19 in its daily COVID-19 death totals, although the daily COVID-19 at-home deaths likely were in the hundreds.
"Silent hypoxia" probably accounts for many at-home COVID-19 deaths. Those with COVID-19 can experience precipitous oxygen deprivation despite being seemingly asymptomatic, not even experiencing shortness of breath. This complication of COVID-19 is especially dangerous for persons living alone.
<<As doctors see more and more COVID-19 patients, they are noticing an odd trend: Patients whose blood oxygen saturation levels are exceedingly low but who are hardly gasping for breath.
These patients are quite sick, but their disease does not present like typical acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a type of lung failure known from the 2003 outbreak of the SARS coronavirus and other respiratory diseases. Their lungs are clearly not effectively oxygenating the blood, but these patients are alert and feeling relatively well, even as doctors debate whether to intubate them by placing a breathing tube down the throat.>>
It's unclear how accurately at-home deaths are reported in Ohio, and whether they are accurately being reported as COVID-19 deaths. Ohio and most states do NOT report at-home COVID-19 deaths independent from other COVID-19 deaths IF they are reporting at-home COVID-19 deaths at all. It's very likely that COVID-19 deaths in Ohio and nationally are underreported. Comparing normal death rates in counties against current death rates may better reflect the number of deaths attributable directly or indirectly to COVID-19 as persons who die not having previously tested positive for COVID-19 are not being given posthumous COVID-19 tests due to the shortage of testing capacity.
As of today.
Ohio’s population is 11,750,000.
Coronavirus cases in Ohio =15,963
Coronavirus deaths in Ohio=728
0.13% of Ohio residents have coronavirus.
0.061% of Ohio residents have died.
IMO these numbers and percents do not justify shutting down Ohio.
And if you subtract the high percentage of deaths that are elderly, people with pre existing conditions or immune compromised, the chances of dying from coronavirus virus is even smaller as a percent. So I wonder why the mass hysteria?
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Growth rates for ICU admissions and cumulative deaths rebounded on 4/27, perhaps reflecting reporting delays on 4/26, a Sunday.
On Monday, Gov. DeWine released detailed plans to reopen the Ohio economy and to ramp up testing and contact tracing, with the initial reopenings taking place May 1 and May 4.
The new Ohio guidelines also contain mandatory conditions and recommended best practices for each business category allowed to reopen.
<<May 1: All health care procedures that do not require an overnight hospital stay can move forward, as well as dentists and veterinarians.
May 4: Manufacturing, distribution, construction and general office environments can reopen.>>
On May 12, reopenings will be extended to retailers and service companies, but restaurants, barbers, hair salons, and similar personal service businesses will remain closed. Apparently, DeWine offered no explanation about what employees will do with their children as many day care businesses will remain closed. On March 24, DeWine closed most day care centers.
<<The state is closing most daycares in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus and implement the stay at home order. However, special pandemic daycare centers will continue to operate, but spots are limited.>>
<<Bars, hair salons, restaurants, gyms and daycares will not be open at this time.
“We realize day care remains a challenge for people,” he said, since many bosses are going to require their workers to come in and schools are closed....
May 12: retailers and service companies
On May 12, retailers and service companies will be allowed to reopen, he said, with employees and customers required to wear facial coverings. Guests must enter in a staggered fashion to allow 6 feet between them -- along with signs announcing social distancing.>>
DeWine's plan doesn't open all businesses on May 1 as favored by many Republican legislators, and DeWine didn't address the day care issue or a general election plan, as requested by Democrats.
<<Unlike other states, restaurants, bars, daycares, and gyms are not included in Ohio's first phase of reopening. Schools, daycares, barbershops and salons, entertainment and amusement facilities, parades, fairs and spectator sports will also remain closed indefinitely....
DeWine's announcement followed the release of a contesting plan from Republicans in the Ohio House's 2020 Economic Task Force. That group has been hearing from business owners via videoconference for more than two weeks.
The plan, signed by a majority of Republicans in the Ohio House, says that "all businesses can and should begin opening on or before May 1." It argues that "in Ohio, we believe we are now past that stage of concern" of overwhelming the health care system.
The plan has 12 principles and strongly recommends employers and customers to follow CDC guidelines, but doesn't have enforcement procedures. It says that Ohioans can be trusted to responsibly reopen the economy, saying that "all businesses are essential."
Ohio House Democrats put out their own proposal with 10 areas of focus, including testing, tracing, child care, worker protection and support for business.
In those 10 areas of focus, Democrats want more details about the workforce that will be hired for contact tracing; the plan for day cares for workers who are called back to their jobs; a general election contingency plan if in-person voting is at risk in the fall; and a clear plan from the state with regard to how to reopen the state to everyone.>>
Surprisingly, unlike the state of Washington, DeWine did mention the use of National Guard troops to ramp up contact tracing.
<<"We expect roughly 1,500 workers focused solely on contact tracing by the second week of May," Gov. Jay Inslee said in a televised speech Tuesday. "This workforce will be rapid-response, something like a fire brigade."
There are already about 700 contact tracers available, state and local public health employees. More will be hired, and Wiesman says the state will also draw 500 from the National Guard.>>
Washington, with a population of 7.8 million, will have a much larger contact tracing effort per capita than Ohio. With a population of 11.7 million, Ohio would need 2,250 contact tracers to equal the per capita contract tracing effort being implemented in Washington.
DeWine in a recent Ohio poll received extremely favorable ratings for his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
<<* 75.1% gave DeWine a favorable rating (11.8% unfavorable); fewer people rated Trump favorable (43.1%) than unfavorable (48.2%).
* 85% supported DeWine’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, well above Trump’s 50.3% on the same question.
* 89.7% viewed the coronavirus information provided by DeWine as accurate (either by a great deal or fairly so) in comparison to just 49.9% for Trump.
“Ohioans view DeWine as a credible source of information. He doesn’t sugarcoat anything, and he leans heavily on public health experts,” said Lauren Copeland, associate director of BW’s Community Research Institute.>>
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
The 6% growth rate in ICU admissions was the highest since a 7 percent daily growth reported two weeks ago on 4/14.
Once again DeWine caved to political pressure (as with his decision to not classify religious gatherings, funerals and weddings as non-essential activities). He announced at the Tuesday briefing that Ohio no longer will require customers to wear masks, but businesses still can ban from their premises customers not wearing masks.
DeWine also said the state is working on a method to open day care centers, a necessity for some workers as businesses reopen in May. Ditto with restaurants, barber shops, and hair salons.
Once again DeWine caved to political pressure (as with his decision to not classify religious gatherings, funerals and weddings as non-essential activities). He announced at the Tuesday briefing that Ohio no longer will require customers to wear masks, but businesses still can ban from their premises customers not wearing masks. https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/...-briefing.html
If I have a C-note taped across my mouth - think they'll let me in?
Last edited by 216facts; 04-29-2020 at 06:04 PM..
Reason: bad english
Here are the daily reports of hospitalizations (rate of change from prior day) and deaths (rate of change from prior day, or from the prior recorded report if one or more daily reports are missed) from the Ohio Dept. of Health. Anybody feel free to update this chart in the event that I am unable to or forget to do so. Until the rate of change begins to decrease over many days if not weeks, this epidemic won't have begun to peak in Ohio.
Beginning 3/25/20, Ohio added ICU (intensive care unit) hospitalizations to its daily COVID-19 report. Ohio's report is not very good and does not explain the statistics. E.g., I'm assuming that these are cumulative death statistics, but that hospitalizations reflect current hospitalized COVID-19 patients and ICU patients and not just new daily patients; if so, the hospitalization and ICU statistics are net of discharges, reported by some states which report cumulative hospitalizations and discharges as well as current hospitalized patients.
So for each day, hospitalized patients are listed first, then ICU patients (beginning 3/25 when Ohio first began reporting this statistic), then cumulative deaths. HOSPITALIZATIONS MAY BE THE KEY METRIC TO WATCH WHEN GAUGING EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE COVID-19 EPIDEMIC.
<<Ignore the skyrocketing case count, or at least take it with a grain of salt. As FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has explained, the number of positive tests reported in any given city, state or country is highly dependent on the number of tests conducted there — which differs wildly from place to place over time. Death tolls are more useful for comparing how the epidemic is evolving in different locales. But because it typically takes weeks for someone with COVID-19 to die, they’re also lagging indicators that tell you less about where on its epidemic trajectory the virus is now than where it was back then.
The number you really want to focus on is hospitalizations.>>
To keep posts in this thread from becoming too long, five-day reports will replace daily statistics using compounded rates of change (calculated using a business calculator). Daily statistics will remain available in earlier threads. Five-day compounded rates of change are marked by an asterisk. The 5-day death growth rate from 3/20 to 3/25 likely was distorted by having only 1 death as the starting point.
Growth rates for the three epidemic metrics were incongruous, especially at first look. While ICU admissions showed the first reported DECLINE in a growth metric, cumulative deaths spiked upwards by 147 deaths to 937, a 19 percent growth rate over the 790 reported on 4/28.
The 4/28/20 Ohio COVID-19 report initially listed 753 cumulative deaths. Ohio, reflecting the IMO pathetically bad statistical reporting and epidemic disclosure standards of the DeWine administration, doesn't archive its COVID-19 reports.
Thankfully, in analyzing the 4/29/20 jump in cumulative deaths, Rich Exner of Cleveland.com used an apparently adjusted 4/28 death total of 799, apparently reflecting lagged reporting of 4/28 deaths. I'm not going to adjust death totals from the totals originally report by the DeWine administration because of the effort required and the resulting confusion that would result with numbers constantly changed each day.
Exner did provide an analysis of the jump in 4/29 cumulative deaths, explaining how they reflected lagged reporting, including 7 deaths from as far back as April 15!
<<The reported deaths increased 17.3% from 799 the day before, while the case total increased 3.2% from 16,769.
However, death reports are lagging. The new deaths reported Wednesday included seven from April 15, eight from April 16, seven from April 17, nine from April 18 and 12 from April 21.>>
I assume that Exner's adjusted 799 deaths for 4/28 reflects 9 additional deaths for 4/28 reported on 4/29 on a lagged basis. Adding the 43 lagged deaths reported for dates prior to 4/28 to the 799 total provides a new denominator of 842. If my assumption is accurate, then 4/29 reported deaths are initially reported at 95 deaths (937 -842) and the adjusted daily growth rate in cumulative deaths would be "only" 11 percent.
As is typical, the DeWine administration apparently provided no explanation for this spike in deaths, nor for why there is such a lag in reported deaths.
Reading the rest of Exner's 4/29 report, it appears that both hospitalizations and ICU admissions reported by Ohio are CUMULATIVE numbers. If so, the daily Ohio COVID-19 report is even more useless. Exner's explanation:
<<Separately, data collected by the Ohio Hospital Association showed a dip in current coronavirus patients from reporting hospitals to 980 on Wednesday, from 1,073 the day before.
The number of patients in intensive care was reported at 404, down from 438.>>
Exner's analysis suggests that Ohio has a significant amount of unused hospital room and ICU capacity, making the reopening of hospital surgical centers much more acceptable.
Why doesn't Ohio report on a daily basis the number of COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized and the number currently in ICU in addition to cumulative numbers? Do any persons in the Ohio media apart from Exner understand this discrepancy?
These low ICU patient numbers make the 95 deaths reported on 4/29 even more inexplicable.
Last edited by WRnative; 04-30-2020 at 12:10 PM..
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Correction to post 46
