- by New Deal democrat
In one of his first acts in office, T—-p effectively shut down the entire US public health apparatus, for all intents and purposes turning this country into a third world backwater lagging such developing countries like India and South Africa.
Despite this termination, a workaround exists by using the combined information generated by the States, many of which still have their own public health “dashboards,” as well as reference to similar statistics still kept by Canada.
This is my first, bare-bones “Interstate COVID Dashboard” which I hope to update at least biweekly, using the above to estimate the data that is missing due to the termination of CDC information.
For this initial installment, the last CDC estimate of wastewater levels, which somehow did get published last Friday, is still helpful in estimating deaths for the next few weeks, since deaths follow infections by about 4 weeks. In that regard, I should note that - ominously - BIobot has also “paused” its reports due to “maintenance,” which very much looks like it is bending the knee to avoid retaliation from T—-p.
This first, preliminary report only covers COVID deaths and makes use of data generated by a total of 9 States: CO, IN, MA, MI, NJ, NY, OH, OR, and TX. Only 4 of these States have data available for each week for the past 2 years. Some have data for the last year only. One State - OH - lags the others by 2 weeks, but should continue to update. And one - CO - only keeps death *rates* per 100,000 for the past 12 months, but that is still useful for calculating trends. Additionally, I suspect that like the CDC, data for the last few weeks may be preliminary. I will watch over the next few weeks to see if that is the case or not.
With all that out of the way, here is the data:
In week three of 2023, the 4 States which have kept weekly statistics available since 2023, reported 66 deaths. This compares with 79 in week 2 of this year, and 105 in week 1. One year ago in week 3 of the year, these same States reported 238 deaths, a 72% decline YoY. The CDC reported that nationally there were 2,364 deaths in week 3 of last year. This suggests about 700 deaths nationwide in week 3 of this year.
In week 3 of 2024, CO reported 1.8 deaths per 100,000. This year so far it is running at only 0.2 per 100,000, a nearly 90% decline.
A further comparison can be made with this past summer’s wave. At that peak, deaths in reporting States totaled 183. Since we know that infections peaked during the first week of January at a level only 64% of that peak, and per the CDC’s prior reports deaths peaked at 1361 within the next month, that suggests a peak in the next several weeks of roughly 870 deaths nationwide.
Additionally, the last preliminary number reported by the CDC, for the week of January 11, was 445 deaths. Final totals have typically been 2* to 2.5* that number. That suggests the final number for that week will be 900-1100 deaths.
Finally, Canada’s national infection and death data showed that in the past 6 months, the rate of infections has been close to that we know of from the US, i.e., a spike in late summer to 9 deaths per 100,000, and a smaller spike right after the holidays to approximately 6, and only 4 per 100,000 in week 3 of this year. This also suggests a death toll of less than 50% of one year ago; which translated to the US is approximately 1,050 deaths.
Putting all of the sources together, the most likely range of deaths in the US during the week ending January 19 was between 900-1000. Which means that the death toll from COVID during the entire 12 month period through then was about 45,000-46,000.
Finally, as I wrote at the outset, this is a preliminary, bare-bones report to show proof of concept. Several of the States I already checked also publish updates on variant proportions, wastewater data, and hospitalizations. So I hope to expand this report to include that information. In the meantime, I hope that any readers in “Blue” States, or at least States with Democratic governors like KY, who previously discontinued their data reporting, will contact their representative and other officials and ask them to reinstate their respiratory disease dashboards.
