Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post #1230: COVID-19 trend to 9/2/2021

The U.S. stands at 50.9 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population per day, down a bit from yesterday.  The seven-day increase was 5%, also down a bit from yesterday.

Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts:  Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 9/3/2021, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.”  The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html.

I’ve added a linear trend line to the chart of showing the growth rate in new cases.  This is so you can see where I’ve been coming from with the idea that we ought to see the peak of the Delta wave in early September.  Up until about a week ago, we were smoothly on track for that.  But that’s stalled this past week.

CDC is still showing that hospitalizations peaked for the U.S. as a whole.  That said, if I look at individual states, cases and hospitalizations appear to be in synch.

Here’s the U.S.

Source:  CDC Covid data tracker.

Here’s e.g., Texas, Florida, California.  There, the fall in hospitalizations matches the fall in new cases.

I’m still looking for direct evidence that the last little blip I saw was related to re-opening of schools.  It is, as I have noted before, tough to get any sort of U.S. breakout of new cases by age, in any sort of timely fashion.

I can get that information for Virginia, but many Virginia school districts start school after Labor Day.

The bottom line is that I’m still looking for any reasonable confirmation that the age mix of new cases showed some sudden shift toward school-age children.

As for the rate of testing, well, the CDC’s reported data have such long lags that it’s impossible to tell, yet, nationally, whether there was a clear increase in testing associated with school openings.

Post #G21-049: Simplest solar food dehydrator, works with Nesco dehydrator trays.

 

Edit 4/19/2022: As shown, this simple solar food dryer is under-powered and under-ventilated.  It clearly will dry tomatoes, just not fast enough in my climate to suit my needs.  I’m going to put together a modified-and-improved version of this for the 2022 garden year, and I’ll link to that when I have that finished.

Edit 4/28/2022:  See Post G22-015.  If you go with this, replace the “chimney” with a two-watt (or so) computer fan.  And in the end, while this nice clean plastic tote is convenient, the throughput is too small.  When all the dust has settled, my decision is to cobble up a much larger, fan-vented version of this once the tomatoes start ripening later this year.  The concept is fine.  I just need to execute it at a much larger scale.

This started out to be a little treatise on solar dehydrators, ovens, and kilns. And I may yet write that.

But my goal, right now, is to make a small solar food dehydrator that will work with four 13.5″ diameter trays from my Nesco electric food dryer.  That’s “a batch of tomatoes” for me.  The upside of using those trays is that I can always finish off the drying using the electric food dehydrator.  It is, in effect, hybrid solar-electric food drying. Continue reading Post #G21-049: Simplest solar food dehydrator, works with Nesco dehydrator trays.

Post #1229: COVID-19 trend to 9/1/2021, back-to-school uptick

 

Yesterday, there was a little uptick in the numbers that I didn’t expect to see.  Today, the message in the tea leaves appears much clearer.  Enough so that I’m going to jump to a conclusion based on two days’ deviation from trend.

It’s starting to look like we can toss my prediction about the path of the Delta wave into the trash.  But the upside is that we can do that for a very specific reason: School is back in session.

Even if that’s right — if this current little uptick in cases is a back-to-school uptick  — it’s not yet clear the extent to which that reflects more actual infections, or merely more screening, testing, and discovery of infections.  That’s what I’ll try to look at next.

Continue reading Post #1229: COVID-19 trend to 9/1/2021, back-to-school uptick

Post #1226: COVID-19 trend to 8/27/2021, finishing out the week, and a note on COVID-19 death rate

 

As pictured here, we’re still on track for a peak of the Delta wave in early September.

The U.S. is now at 48 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population per day, down a bit from yesterday.  The seven-day increase was 7%, not materially different from yesterday.

As we saw in past waves, a second “wavelet” of states is emerging.  New case rates have peaked in the three states that led the wave (FL, LA, MS).  Those states are now being overtaken by KY, SC, and TN, all of which have current new case counts in the 90s and double-digit growth rates.  Georgia and Alabama are not far behind.

Continue reading Post #1226: COVID-19 trend to 8/27/2021, finishing out the week, and a note on COVID-19 death rate

Post #1224: Virginia data on breakthrough infections.

 

Virginia is very much a middle-of-the-road state.  We’ve had reasonable and sensible guidance from our governor (who is himself an MD) throughout the pandemic.  The Commonwealth made disaster preparations early on, converting a dorm at one of the big state schools into a standby hospital facility.  And we always seem to be in the middle of the pack in terms of infection rate, vaccination rate, mask use, and so on.

Not coincidentally, the Commonwealth of Virginia has consistently produced (IMHO) the best publicly-available data on the COVID-19 pandemic.  In particular, they recently began summarizing “breakthrough” infections, that is, COVID-19 infections among vaccinated individuals. Continue reading Post #1224: Virginia data on breakthrough infections.