All my various postings tracking the COVID-19 pandemic through the end of 2022.
Source data for all graphs: NY Times Github COVID data repository. Graphs show data reported through 1/13/2021.
First, a little flattening of the curve?
Second, ND is now sole owner of second place. Only Hawaii has a lower rate of new cases / 100,000 / day. As goes ND, so goes the nation. We hope. Continue reading Post #951: Brief trends update
The above is the title of an article from yesterday’s Atlantic. My wife just forwarded it to me with the comment that this is what I wrote about last week. But in fact, it touches on things I’ve been writing about for months.
First, note the sub-head: Cloth masks are better than nothing. That pretty much sums it up for me. Ditto for those cheap disposable blue ear-loop surgical masks.
It’s a short article. You should take a couple of minutes to read it. There’s almost nothing there that you haven’t read here over the past few weeks. But it’s heartening to see this in mainstream media.
And I think it’s worth reiterating the high points. Which I’m now going to do by copying extensively from that article. And then maybe use this as an excuse to put together links to my relevant postings on masks, as a separate post.
The author of the Atlantic article doesn’t go on to what I now see as the obvious policy implication: Supply N95 respirators to the elderly via the Medicare program.
I think people will eventually get around to that. You just have to ask whether the pandemic will be over before we finally get our act together on masks. Continue reading Post #950: The mask question goes mainstream.
This is a brief note on a rather silly Washington Post article. The article is here.
The Post article raises an important point: Why doesn’t your insurance (or your health savings account or flexible spending account) cover the cost of your masks?
The reason I call it silly is that the cost of masks is trivial, as health care expenses go. It’s hard to think of a legit health care expense that can be measured by dollars in the single digits. So it didn’t really catch my eye for that.
It caught my eye because I’d just finished writing a post on the German health care system and provision of N95 masks (Post #945). There, the government is not just providing masks via their insurance plans, it’s providing FFP2 (equivalent to N94) masks. Continue reading Post #949: Insurance coverage of masks.
Source: Calculated from NY Times Githib COVID data repository. All graphs below have the same data source. Thick blue line is the U.S. average. Dotted red line is my guess as to trend. The dips in the blue line are true reductions in reported cases during/following the holidays, as discussed in Post #929.
This post is something of a catch-up. It’s about current trends, and about the post-Christmas surge. Which, you might notice, you aren’t reading much about, currently. And it’s about correcting some recent errors I made.
First, some clean ups. The following posts were wrong:
Continue reading Post #948: COVID trends through 1/12/2021
Source: Calculated from NY Times Github COVID data repository. Data reported through 1/12/2021.
North Dakota now has the second-lowest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the country. (Well, maybe third — they are tied with Vermont, rounded to the nearest whole number.) Only Hawaii has a materially lower rate. Continue reading Post #947: COVID trends through 1/12/2021. Is North Dakota the bellwether?
Image source: The Dismal Science, A Novel, by Peter Mountford, via Amazon.com
The stimulus fairy came by last week and left $1200 under my pillow.
I was surprised. I don’t think of my self as needing stimulus. Not of that sort, anyway. And I didn’t get in on the first round of COVID stimulus, because at that time I was still working and had some income.
But now that I’m retired and a drain on society? Hey presto, free money.
Of course, to an economist, “free” is a four-letter word. In keeping with The Dismal Science, I immediately began working out all the downsides of that transaction.
And so, after sloughing off that charity payment to an actual charity, I whipped up a batch of hot chocolate. I sat by my wood stove and put my feet up. And settled in for a nice, relaxing reading of the Congressional Budget Office Monthly Budget Review, starting with October 2020 edition (for the fiscal year ending 9/30/2020). With a side order of National Income and Product Accounts data, courtesy of the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
And so this is a post about the COVID stimulus payments, GDP, and why there ought to be better means testing for COVID stimulus money. Continue reading Post #946: A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
I have heard it said that whatever bright idea you have, somebody’s already had it, and posted it on the internet. Twice.
And so it goes with the idea of having the government issue N95 masks to the general public (Post #942). Based on the recent JAMA-published mask test, use of an N95 respirator results in a roughly 14-fold reduction in virus exposure relative to a typical procedure (surgical) mask or cloth mask. My guess is, use of N95 respirators in place of cloth or disposable surgical masks is the single most effective step that could be taken to reduce the population’s exposure to cornavirus.
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Turns out, this idea has not gone unnoticed. Outside of the U.S. Continue reading Post #945: Masks, part III: The Germans have the good sense to issue N95s. Medicare should copy.
Data through 1/9/2021.
I thought we were past all the data reporting artifacts associated with holidays, but that wasn’t true. This most recent little “hook” on the trends for many states related back to January 1/January 2. A lot of states reported zero for January 1, and then reported two days’ worth of counts on January 2. The most recent seven-day moving average starts with January 3, and so is finally beyond that. With any luck, there will be no more artifacts in the data.
The fact remains that new case counts in most states are trending modestly upward. Five geographically-diverse states now have more than 100 new cases/ 100,000/ day:
But in general, where the first and second waves were marked by growing case rates in a few areas, at present, what’s driving the US total upward is a broad-based steady growth across almost all the states. That’s clearly visible in the upward slant of the tangle of lines at the right edge of the first graph above.
Edit: In hindsight, this post and the next post were wrong. What you’re seeing below is mostly the last of the data reporting glitches occurring around the holidays. See Post #948 for a re-hash of this issue.
Original post follows.
Source: Calculated from NY Times Github COVID data repository. Data reported through 1/8/2021.
Recall that the previously-stated hallmarks of a holiday-driven surge would be an abrupt uptick in new COVID cases per day, occurring simultaneously across many or all states, arriving between twelve days to three weeks after the travel and socializing for that holiday began (Post #915). If all those pieces fall into place — abruptness, simultaneity, and timing — that’s about as good a case as you can make regarding causality — that the increase in cases is due to the prior holiday.
No such thing happened for Thanksgiving (Post #922). But it sure looks like we are now seeing the post-Christmas/New Year’s surge in new COVID-19 cases.
The circled area on the regional/national chart above satisfies all my criteria. You can see the simultaneous upswing in all six regions. The graph below illustrates the abruptness and timing criteria.
Continue reading Post #943: The post-Christmas surge is here.
Source: Carnegie-Mellon Delphi Group Covidcast. This is based on an ongoing Facebook survey of mask use.
Based on the above, it looks like the wear-a-mask message finally seems to be getting through to most people.
In Post #935, I made yet another plea not just to wear a mask, but to wear a good mask.
Upon reflection, I think this ought to be Federal policy. And I think the Feds ought to re-purpose the original plans for a U.S. mask initiative to accomplish that.
And so that’s what this posting is about. I’ll start by recapping where we were, back in April of 2020 when the CDC first said “wear a cloth mask”. Remind you of the first Federal mask initiative, the one that was spiked by the Trump administration. I’ll note what has changed (the shortage of N95 masks), and what hasn’t (the ban on retail sales of N95 masks to the general public). Remind you of how vastly better N95s are compared to commonly-used masks. And end by suggesting that the Federal government should start mailing good masks — N95 respirators — directly to U.S. households, starting with Southern California. Because this is one instance in which the marketplace will not adequately serve our needs.
Really, there’s just about nothing here that I haven’t said before. But I think it’s worth saying again. Policies designed to keep N95s out of the hands of the public made sense in light of a critical shortage of those respirators. A shortage that ended months ago. Now, those same policies are worse than useless. Those outdated policies shouldn’t just be eliminated, they should be reversed, with a goal of getting N95s into the hands of the public.
