The inevitable happened today and our Goober has made San Diego County 'purple'. This means he has announced the re-re-re-closing of many of our business, most especially indoor seating for restaurants. And why did he do that? Because our adjusted CASE rate is above 7.0 for the second consecutive week.
I have ranted ad nauseum about how crazy this is. So this time, no rant just SCIENCE. Also an apology for the quality (or lack thereof) for the resolution of the plots.
Below you can find the plots of daily reported positive tests (total cases), daily hospitalization, daily ICU admissions, daily reported deaths, and daily reported tests for the time periods April 7 to November 7. Each are shown as weekly running averages to reduce the noise. The plots for Hospitalizations, ICU admissions and tests are included mostly for completeness sake. I've also shown the weekly running average of the daily reported positive case numbers for the age groups 0 to 30 and 70 and up, but only for the time period June 9 to November 7 (as I don't have the age breakdown of cases prior to June 9).
I now invite you to compare the shape of the deaths to that of the total cases. Are they the same? Should we be using cases as our warning bell for increasing deaths? Now compare the deaths to the cases for those 70 and older. Do they seem to match? Is this what we should be worrying about? It is also interesting to compare the shapes of the total cases and the cases for those 0 to 30 (and I note that since the beginning of the outbreak the total deaths in San Diego county for those aged 0 to 30 is four).
So I ask you dear reader, if our goal is to reduce deaths (a noble and reasonable goal), should we be worried about total cases? Or is there a clearly superior alternate? And if so, how should that impact our actions? Should we be closing down our restaurants? Should we be very concerned with protecting the elderly? Is there anything here we didn't know MONTHS ago (see my post of April 19)?
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Plot of cases for those age groups 0 to 30 (blue) and 70 and up (red).
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| Plot of total cases over time. |
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| Plot of deaths over time. |
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| Plot of Hospitalizations over time. |
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| Plot of ICU admissions over time. |
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| Plot of tests over time. |
