Bacon's Rebellion

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Wonks Rejoice: More COVID-19 Data on Display!

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James A. Bacon
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by James A. Bacon

I have to tip my hat to the anonymous state employees who are maintaining the Virginia Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard. They are publishing more data, and they’re spiffing it up with some pretty decent displays.

For example: The graph above, snipped from the VDH dashboard, show the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases by the week the illness began. The graph is useful because gives an indication of how many COVID-19 patients will be moving through the roughly two-week “pipeline” of the disease’s average duration and coming out the other side… either dead or alive.

Combine those numbers with a new Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association statistic — the number of COVID-19 cases that have confirmed and discharged — and we can get a sense of how many virus survivors there are and we can forecast how many more there will be in the next couple of weeks. VHHA reported that 457 patients have been discharged from hospitals so far.

That’s probably the tip of the iceberg: Many COVID-19 patients show no symptoms, so they never get tested. Still, the trend line is important. Because COVID-19 survivors are presumed to be immune to a second infection at least for a while, the Northam administration should be bending every effort to certify them and exempt them from social-distancing restrictions so they can recycle back into the workforce.

Here’s another  useful graph, which displays hospitalizations by health district. It shows clearly that, in raw numbers, Northern Virginia is the hot spot in Virginia, followed by Hampton Roads. That’s not surprising given that the two metropolitan areas have by far the largest populations. The numbers crunchers at VDH could provide a useful service if they could display the number of hospitalizations as a percentage of the population, a far better measure of intensity. (That’s not a criticism, by the way, just a suggestion.)

A word of warning when interpreting this table: It does not reflect people who die from the virus but never make it into the hospital. As of six days ago, 28 people had been reported dead at the Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Henrico County. Few, if any, were admitted to the hospital. But if you want to know where the COVID-19 virus is wreaking the most havoc, Henrico County may be the real epicenter, which is not reflected in the table.

There are many ways to slice and dice the data, and there is no single-best way to present it. It depends mainly on what want to know. Regardless, public-policy geeks interested in tracking the spread of the virus can be thankful that some unsung employee (or employees) are making an effort to enriching the presentation of the data.

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32 responses to “Wonks Rejoice: More COVID-19 Data on Display!”

  1. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” Because COVID-19 survivors are presumed to be immune to a second infection at least for a while, the Northam administration should be bending every effort to certify them and exempt them from social-distancing restrictions so they can recycle back into the workforce.”

    How does one prove that they are “immune” to a prospective employer?

    1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
      Nancy_Naive

      Cough on them?

      SouKorea has reported recovered patients have tested positive AFTER testing negative. Now what?

      1. virginiagal2 Avatar
        virginiagal2

        My understanding is that they believe these are primarily people prematurely determined to be recovered. At least that’s the current thinking.

    2. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      NN, you are correct about the South Korean “reinfections,” but apparently nobody knows yet if those were simply erroneous positives on the first test, or indication that some people can have the disease but not develop antibodies to it, or develop antibodies to it but not strongly enough to resist a heavy viral re-exposure, or maybe develop antibodies but to a different variant of the disease.

      1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
        Nancy_Naive

        Were they using the Abbottt Labs test perhaps?

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Ouch! Who knows? But we’re probably gonna find out given the sentiment of more than a few who say they are tired of this lockdown and are getting ready to ignore it.

          1. Acbar Avatar
            Acbar

            Let’s invite the folks who’re so “tired” of it to go party together on a carnival-style cruise ship — destination irrelevant as long as it’s outside the U.S., right, Mr. President?

          2. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            sounds like they’re gonna do that but start first on the beaches and the bars!

  2. TBill Avatar
    TBill

    Questions:
    (1) Is the hospitalization data total ever or current number in there?
    (2) Unimportant in the scheme of things, but how does one pronounce “Henrico” ? Is it a long “i” ? That’s not my way, but WTOP radio says it that way. They have nursing home on the news every day.

    1. ksmith8953 Avatar
      ksmith8953

      Yes a long I as in I.

    2. Nancy_Naive Avatar
      Nancy_Naive

      Short i. Like in “rich”mond.

      1. ksmith8953 Avatar
        ksmith8953

        Nancy, I have never heard it pronounced as Hen ric o short i?

        Googled, it says, Hen Rye Ko???

        1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
          Nancy_Naive

          No, just say “Richmond”. Nobody calls it Henrico except the people who live there, and that’s just so they don’t have to tell people they live in Richmond.

          1. ksmith8953 Avatar
            ksmith8953

            I agree with that totally!!!!

    3. Acbar Avatar
      Acbar

      TBill, used to live near there and it’s hen-rye-co; NN is pulling your leg. The name, FWIW, traces to one of the four original counties of Virginia which were all “cities” as in James City, Charles City, and Elizabeth City (merged out of existence into Hampton). Henry and Charles were the two sons of James (thus the Capes as well) but for some reason I’ve never learned, Henry City was always referred to contemporaneously using its Latinized name, Henricopolis. That was shortened much later to Henrico. I realize that suggests the short “i” pronunciation was historically correct, but it’s plainly long “i” today.

      1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
        Nancy_Naive

        Also the first college in Virginia… ‘cuse me, New World

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          The “Citie of Henricus”—also known as Henricopolis, Henrico Town or Henrico—was a settlement in Virginia founded by Sir Thomas Dale in 1611 as an alternative to the swampy and dangerous area around the original English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. It was named for Prince Henry, the eldest son of King James I.

          The site of Henricus is located on a neck of land called Farrar’s Island, which later became part of the Shire of Henrico (1634) and was renamed Henrico County in 1637.

  3. ksmith8953 Avatar
    ksmith8953

    After looking at several data sets, is there any data set that shows the number of cases and the number of deaths per number in the population. You made a point to stating that Henrico may be the epicenter, but it appears that with the 31 added the those who have died at Canterbury in a hospital setting, it would nowhere = 218 from Fairfax. However, if you look at that number per number in the population, it might be pretty high. Is there a site that lists this? 1,147,532 million in Fairfax (google) with 218 hospitalized cases = .0190% vs. 352,802 in Henrico with 59 hospitalized cases = .0167% ? You may be right, if we looked at Henrico’s total number of cases vs. Fairfax’s total number of cases in this way we might be as close to Fairfax, if not higher.

  4. ksmith8953 Avatar
    ksmith8953

    Okay, I did the same calculation by number of cases: 1164/1,147,532 = 1.01% for Fairfax and 397 (not sure if this includes the 28 from Canterbury)/352,802 = 1.13 for Henrico. You are right, Henrico may be the real epicenter.

  5. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    John Butcher has done the grunt work of calculating COVID-19 cases per thousand. The worst offenders by that measure may not be who you’d expect:

    https://www.baconsrebellion.com/app/uploads/2020/04/cases_per_thousand.jpg

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Either this data is wonky or the virus is wonky or social distancing is totally screwing up how a virus spreads through a population on a fairly uniform basis.

      I am missing the point of looking at the data this way. What is it informing us?

  6. ksmith8953 Avatar
    ksmith8953

    Wow. Tells a little different picture of the spread. You mentioned lagging indicators, those hospitalized. I wonder what a leading indicator would be based on John’s numbers. For example, population density? Number of prisons might count, also a dense population. I guess my reason for asking is what points us to possible hotspots in the next outbreak (not that we would want that)?

    1. John Butcher Avatar
      John Butcher

      The Health Dept. has an interesting map of “outbreaks”: http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/

      Preview: Mostly “Long Term Care Facilities.”

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        Outbreaks in confined facilities are different from community outbreaks which seems to be how the term “hot spot” is being used in other states.

        It should be no real surprise that transmission of the virus is higher in confined facilities like nursing homes. Not just Virginia

        “As of Friday, more than half of New York’s 613 licensed nursing homes had reported coronavirus infections, with 4,630 total positive cases and 1,439 deaths, officials said.

        In New Jersey, nursing homes had been linked to 252 virus-related deaths, more than 90 of them in the past two days. The outbreak has now affected at least 70 percent of the state’s long-term care centers.

        The actual infection rate in nursing homes is almost certainly higher than the data indicate because few homes have the capacity to test residents. The assumption among many in the industry is that every nursing home in the region has people with Covid-19.

        The crisis in nursing homes is occurring in virus hot spots across the country, with infections growing in places like Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.”

        https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/nyregion/nursing-homes-deaths-coronavirus.html

        1. ksmith8953 Avatar
          ksmith8953

          I think we will need to look at the data in many different ways when this is all said and done. I think what we have is important, but there is still more to learn. We have made policy guesses in this one as there were limited data and no time in which to act. Next time, we can be more accurate.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            A re-do? That’s a scary thought!

            Hopefully we will not see another one in our lifetime.

            We have significant numbers of people who say they are at the end of what they’re willing to do in terms of social distancing. It’s even taking on a partisan flavor.

            I just think the fixation on the data is not that useful and can be misleading. We’re trying to “use” it to make decisions and I doubt that the data is that good quality, nor we really understand it fully.

            I think we keep hoping that the virus is not near as bad as predicted and believe that we can stop the social distancing and if it turns out worse than we thought – then it takes a bunch of us that are older or having health conditions.

          2. ksmith8953 Avatar
            ksmith8953

            I hope it doesn’t take me. I think I will practice what might be working.

          3. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            re: ” I hope it doesn’t take me. I think I will practice what might be working.”

            Agree but if others abandon social distancing… we’re just along for the ride after that, I fear…

            It’ll be interesting how this plays out and perhaps not in a good way.

  7. Acbar Avatar
    Acbar

    Newsbreak! Wow! Governor Northam conducted a news conference today, and it was actually made widely available to the public (through PBS NewsHour and other sites). He opened with a wooden reading of prepared remarks but things loosened up substantially during the lengthy Q&A session after. Do this more Gov.! And get better at the technology, please — it’s Ok to flash things on a screen instead of talk about “see this chart on our website” — and it’s OK to answer a question that is clearly audible without repeating the entire hi question — and it’s OK to have a decent audio controller adjust the questioner’s volume (many of these were feeds from people not in the room) so the rest of us can hear it too. But these are nits compared to the importance of you and key staff talking to the public openly and plainly. Good job, Gov.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      FINALLY – someone in the Gov office is hearing of the problem!

      This is a time for leadership. Not everyone is as much a leader as we want
      or even as much is needed.

      And what we are up against – not just the virus but US – the way that “we” are behaving… is at issue also. Northam is beset by forces on either side of him and the side that wants the restrictions to go away is building steam.

  8. Nancy_Naive Avatar
    Nancy_Naive

    All these numbers tell us is that Republicans are dying at a rate of 2 to 1, and they want to kill more of their own.

  9. Nancy_Naive Avatar
    Nancy_Naive

    God Displays Sense of Humor….
    “Hey y’all, the guy who called you in today is dead.”
    Bishop Who Defied Social Distancing Dies After Contracting Covid-19, Church Says
    The death of Bishop Gerald O. Glenn of the New Deliverance Evangelistic Church in Chesterfield, Va., was announced during Easter services.

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