Fall Sports and Race Schedules Present an Unposted Crossroads in the Season of Covid-19.

Plague:” A disastrous evil or affliction.”

New cases soaring.
It is clear that Kentucky’s allotment of the Covid-19 pandemic is not under control. In Jefferson County, our largest, it is currently described as a “wildfire still burning” by a senior county public health officer and where the mayor has extended his order declaring a state of emergency through September 30.  New cases are exploding in smaller and more rural counties where previous total cases had been sparse.  At 608 cases per day, the current 7-Day average of new cases statewide continues to gyrate widely depending on day of the week but is hovering at three times what it was through May and June.  Even if this represents a “plateau” in the number of daily new cases, at the current rate of expansion we remain on-track to double the aggregate number of total cases every month. The 4352 new state-wide cases last week fell short by only a little the highest weekly total ever.  

Deaths following.
The 12 deaths reported yesterday represent the highest daily reported count since May 30th. The 7-Day average number of deaths reported daily at 6.7 is currently the highest since June 5th. This number is expected to rise as deaths catch up with cases. In Kentucky, currently 2.1% of all reported cases have died. The true number is certainly higher than this due to unrecognized Covid-19 cases and the collateral damage resulting from unmet medical needs in disrupted medical and social systems. Covid-19 patients currently reported as being in the Hospital or ICU– even if not overwhelming for any given hospital–  remain higher than at any time since the epidemic began.  

Continue reading “Fall Sports and Race Schedules Present an Unposted Crossroads in the Season of Covid-19.”

Historical Covid-19 Data for Kentucky Counties Does Not Suggest a Remission in New Cases.

New cases exploding in smaller and rural counties along with much of the rest of the Midwest.

Readers of this series of Covid-19 articles will have noticed my bewailing of an easily accessible database of case and death numbers at the county level since the beginning of our share of the 2020 pandemic. Frankfort recent made available copies of its individual daily reports since June that include county-specific counts, but these cannot easily be joined together for analysis. As a matter of political policy, the CDC has been standing on the sidelines shifting many of its national responsibilities to the states.

The New York Times filed a freedom of information request to the CDC to get such information, but along with other private entities, has been collecting county-specific case counts the hard way directly from the states. I was able to download the publicly available Times historical database, extracted the numbers for Kentucky, and prepared interactive data visualizations and tables that allow anyone to look specifically at the historical Covid-19 experiences of individual Kentucky counties and the state as a whole. This new panel of visualizations is available here. I make the data supporting these figures available to anyone as an Excel file of some 15,895 rows of data for your own additional analysis.

The following figure shows a typical bar chart of the epidemiolocal curve for Kentucky as a whole. (Click to enlarge these.) The aggregate number of cases in the Times database of 38,546 is more than the 36,945 reported as Total Cases by Frankfort on the evening of August 12. I cannot at this time identify definitively the reason(s) for this discrepancy. They likely result from things like changing CDC requirements for what is required to be reported, different reporting daily time cut-offs, the addition of different definitions of “cases”, different kinds of tests allowed, the inclusion of “probable” cases, multiple tests per unique individual human being, and the like. The national and state data collection and testing structures have been changing if not flawed since the beginning. Nonetheless, the Times data, like that of Johns Hopkins, The Atlantic, or the Covid Tracking Project which emphasize different things are widely used as the best that we have available. I do not see a diminution in the rate of growth of new cases in this chart of Kentucky’s experience as a state.

Continue reading “Historical Covid-19 Data for Kentucky Counties Does Not Suggest a Remission in New Cases.”

New Cases Covid-19 in Kentucky Still at Highest Levels.

A seeming stabilization of case counts this past week at a new high level teased us into thinking we had gotten over the hump of the July surge of new Covid-19 cases. That seems not yet to be the case. The aggregate number of cases increased today by 782 new ones. There were 8 new deaths. The number of patients in ICUs remains at the highest level ever. As we approach the opening of public schools, colleges and universities, college and professional sports, the Kentucky Derby, and other public postponed or Fall activities; it cannot be said that we have our share of the pandemic under adequate control.

Our communities need now to make some hard decisions about where their highest priorities lie– and act as though we believe it! Seems to me that opening public schools physically would rank high on any list if feasible, but there is zero doubt that new cases would emerge in both students and staff that will undermine if not crush the advantages of doing so. (We will still need other than schoolhouse-based ways to provide for the learning and non-pedagogical needs of children and students.) Businesses and their jobs must remain available to the extent they can do so with acceptable safety. There is no zero-risk to anything we do or do not. In my opinion, sporting events and similar large-scale public or non-public events, no matter how much fun to play or attend, do not rise to the same level of necessity to our communities, and in fact are already demonstrating an ability to make things worse. Assuming that all of us as individuals will make the best decisions in the interest of public good is folly.

Below is a bar chart of new cases since March to August 8. The complete series of interactive data visualizations is available on the KHPI Tableau Public website.

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Recent Surge in KY Covid-19 Appears to Moderate.


Presumed effect of masks and closings?

After three months of a slowly rising plateau of new Covid-19 cases in Kentucky, July began with a surge of new cases culminating with a spectacular and frightening peak of 977 new cases on July 19. In response, a mandatory face-covering order was put in place, bars were closed, restaurants were rolled back to smaller capacity, and private groups were limited to 10 people. It is likely that these public health measures blunted the rapid exponential rise, but daily reports of cases since the new maximum varied widely confusing interpretation. Nonetheless, we are not out of the woods yet. Yesterday’s (Aug 6) new cases were 513, but even this number is much higher than any daily count before July 11 (save for the aberrant and non-representative count of 577 on May 5).

Our recent surge is absolutely not the result of increased testing which hasn’t increased much at all since early May in any event. More to the point, there are more Covid-19 patients in the hospital today than at any time in Kentucky’s epidemic, and more in the ICU than any time since its opening days. These new cases are sick people who would have been recognized even if there was minimal testing! It is anticipated that an increase in reported deaths will follow. This latter may already be happening.

The following graphics illustrate our current state of affairs. The full updated panel of interactive data visualizations is available as usual on KHPI’s Public Tableau Website. In addition, I have extracted Kentucky’s historical county-specific Covid-19 data from the New York Times global database. I make an Excel file is available here. I believe this can be helpful in understanding better how our state version of the pandemic unfolded and to understand how to use the data collected by the state at the local level. Please help me explore it. Let me know what you learn. If there is interest, I will update the file more frequently.

The following bar chart shows the number of new cases since the first one in March. Things started to take off as public health measures were relaxed. Lots of things happened in July including major sports events, open bars, and public protests. People were coming out of their caves. I believe that exploring the county-specific historical data can help explain some of the apparent spikes and hope to write about this.

Continue reading “Recent Surge in KY Covid-19 Appears to Moderate.”