No day at Bacon’s Rebellion would be complete without our statistical update courtesy of John Butcher. No question, the population of COVID-19 patients in hospitals is on a consistent upward paragraph. See my previous post for a discussion of why that might be the case.
— JAB
(comments below)
(comments below)
I’m still unaware of any explanation for the growing, growing discrepancy between the VHHA count on patients in hospital and VDH’s substantially higher figure. The gap is wider today (693) than it was three days ago. Why?
Steve, read the **footnote on the VDH site. It says the hospitalization number only represents the hospitalization status at the time VDH learned of the case. The VDH cumulative total of all hospitalizations to date of 2,259 is garbage.
VHHA reports who is currently in the hospital each day and the total discharges to date. Today’s VHHA has 1566 in hospitals and 2042 discharged since April 13 when they started reporting the number.
I’ve seen but never understood that footnote. I’ve suspected the number was garbage.
Here is the most recent dashboard for DOC:
Cumulative positive cases–456
Deaths–2
Positive cases in facilities–380
Hospitalized–12
Recovered–62
The total number of positives, including those in the hospital, increased by 82 from the day before. That was largely the result of an additional 86 at Dillwyn. DOC has recently finished testing all inmates and staff at Dillwyn and this increase is likely the result of all the test results being recorded. The DOC report does not indicate how many of the inmates at Haynesville and Dillwyn are asymptomatic. These are the two facilities with the largest number of positive cases and both of which have had all inmates tested. It is likely that a large majority at both facilities are asymptomatic.
The real downside in the report is the increase, from 7 to 12, in the number of inmates in the hospital.
On a positive note, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the number of juveniles testing positive at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center is down to three, with one new case in the past week. 24 juveniles have recovered and none had to be hospitalized. https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/department-of-juvenile-justice-said-covid-19-spread-at-correctional-center-has-slowed/article_6943c0ad-a5e1-527f-8716-f4d38d602207.html
Experimenting on prisoners is bad form. I have a niggling memory of something I once heard to that effect, but your DoC stats give us a nice little microcosm to study.
If we had the “comings and goings” and demographics data, we might could estimate well the fatality rate of this disease in the general population. Yesterday’s 2:364 would lend credence to a rampaging epidemic in the nation having easily done in the 1 to 2 million.
Inmates are generally less healthy than the general population. Therefore, the comparison might not be apt.
They are no less healthy than the bottom 50%, nutritionally they may be better off. I dunno, I think you might be on to something. Don’t sell it short. At the very least, it’s a control group, or controlled group.
Regarding Dick’s fine reporting:
My central question is why are there only 2 deaths? Why so much lower than other dense congregate places? Is no one asking this important question? If so, why?
It is a good question and I don’t have an answer. This is a vulnerable population–traditionally bad health and crowded. The only answer I can think of so far is that DOC has done a good job of shutting down the prisons and of isolating inmates with a positive diagnosis from the rest of the population. Even then, I would have expected more deaths in the ones that did have a positive diagnosis. The agency is not out of the woods yet with Deerfield, the facility in which it houses its geriatric and assisted living populations.
Based on data seen from other prison systems, I doubt only 380 inmates have been exposed. Perhaps that’s active positives, but have they tested all inmates? No. You’d have to test the whole population for active virus or antibodies to know the actual spread. Everything is pointing to major numbers of people exposed who never show any symptoms at all but do develop antibodies.
That said, I would think that the inmate population would have a high prevalence of the underlying conditions that are associated with mortality from this particular bug. But the number one predictor of death remains age, with over 91 percent of deaths recorded by CDC being 55 and up, and 79 percent 65 and up. The state is rapidly freeing those folks.
Just ran across this story from a German surgeon on why that country has a low death rate so far: 1) the infected were mostly younger, people who picked it up during travel and spread it among their age cohort and 2) they kept it out of the nursing homes, which are less common there anyway. Anybody can get this, but mainly the old or already sick are dying.
https://www.city-journal.org/germany-success-in-managing-pandemic
Of the 8 facilities in which positive cases have been found, DOC has tested all the inmates and staff in four: Harrisonburg, Haynesville, Deerfield, and Dillwyn. Predictably, the number of positive cases went up significantly following the “point prevalence” testing. In three of the facilities in which comprehensive testing has not been done, the number of positive cases has either remained stable or declined. Even if the incidence of infection is more widespread in those facilities, at least the number of inmates showing symptoms is not increasing.
Only 2 was 1/2% of the positives, and they tested all of the prisoners to have 364 yesterday, 4-something today, watch for another death or two in the coming days.
Apparently the media has been pressuring Virginia and Maryland to give more data on who is getting COVID. Gov Hogan of MD finally broke ranks yesterday to end some of the secrecy, announcing some 20% of cases and over 50% of deaths are from nursing home type facilities. Virginia still keeping a lid on it.
This per NBC4 TV News at 11PM last nite, and WTOP radio. Ffx Co. had a lot of new cases yesterday.
Hogan is competent. Northam is not.
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