Results of my COVID-19 research

[pyesetz]

When should I go back to work? I’ve been watching my regional municipality’s COVID-19 summary page, looking for a sign. But many of their numbers are presented as a snapshot with no history, so I decided to write down some numbers every day for a week. (What, you thought my “research” involved labwork or something?). Here are my results:

Date	Total	New	LTC/RH	age 50‒59	age 80+	Active
May  3	817	8	497	146	196	369
May  4	860	29	512	153	201	393
May  5	871	5	518	155	203	382
May  6	887	9	525	157	206	371
May  7	897	6	528	157	207	360
May  8	912	16	526	163	206	345
May  9	932	16	529	166	208	351
May 10	940	4	535	170	209	344
(week)	+123	≈12	+38	+24	+13	−25

Here, Date is the date of the report, which is released the following day. Total is the headline “Positive cases” number from the summary page. To find New, go to the the “Epi-curves” tab, click on the slider to select “New cases by reported date”, then look at the dark blue “Non-facility outbreak related” number; this is a daily value, while all the other numbers in my table are cumulative. Then go to the “Characteristics” tab and look under “Transmission type” to find the LTC/RH number, which are the cases associated with long-term-care homes and retirement homes that I never visit. Look under “Cases by age” to get the age 50‒59 and age 80+ figures. To calculate Active, look under “Current case status” and subtract the “Deceased” and ”Resolved” numbers from the headline total.

What info can we pull from these numbers?

• There are an average of 12 new non-LTC cases per day, so if you’re waiting for two solid weeks to pass without a new case, you can’t even start counting yet.
• Even though these figures are supposed to be cumulative, the number of cases in LTC homes went down on Friday the 8th, as did the total number of age 80+ people who have ever been sick; presumably this is because of two false positives on previous days that were corrected.
• Today the numbers of new non-LTC cases for Friday and Satuday were adjusted downward; previously the graph said there were 17 new cases each day.
• The outbreak among the elderly seems to be ending, while new cases in my age group continue to tick along with no end in sight.
• The main good news is that the COVID-19 active-case count is mostly declining, so there are more sick people recovering or dying from it than there are new people coming down with it.

Next, let us compare the epi-curve for my local area with the one for Italy:

Waterloo, Ontario	Italy

(I have truncated these graphs to start on March 21st, which was my last day of work.) Note that the curve for Italy is flattening. This is supposed to be a logistic curve, but I have truncated the left part and the right part hasn’t happened yet. Still, it looks like Italy is heading towards being done with this thing.

Now compare with the graph for my area. I might be willing to believe that the “facility outbreak related” curve is flattening, but certainly not the dark-blue curve that actually applies to me. It looks like things got worse around April 20th, and then again around May 4th. Nothing is getting any better here.

Conclusion: It is not yet time for me to go back to work.

In other news, the premier of my province (≈ state governor) decided to allow restaurants to sell alcohol for delivery. He also reduced the minimum required mark-up on alcohol by 33%. These initiatives are supposed to help restaurants stay in business until the quarantine can be lifted. In order for this to work, the delivery drivers have to be certified to sell the alcohol to the home customers. So the premier made the online certification program be free for a month and the various delivery companies sent me emails suggesting that maybe I should study for it in order to be eligible for more work from them. So I did! The minimum passing score is 80%; I got 88%, even though I have no ability whatsoever to guess someone's weight to within ±10% based on a photo of their upper body. So I am now certified to be a bartender. It seems the certification would also allow me to sell cannabis, but cannabis delivery has not been authorized. (Premier Ford has always been very focused on alcohol, such as his insistance on arranging for there to be a beer that can be purchased for $1.00 per can, even though almost no one wants to drink such swill.)

Despite what you might believe about the sort of people who would order food for delivery, I don’t think I have ever delivered food to a drunk person. Several of my customers have been stoned, I think at least one of them was high on cocaine, one guy seemed to be off his meds — but no drunkards. What am I supposed to do if there’s an alcohol delivery to a house that stinks of marijuana? Is that okay as long as the person taking the delivery isn’t obviously intoxicated? Given social-distancing rules, it’s not like I can spend a lot of time checking out the person. Apparently the main thing is that I should check their driver’s license ID number to make sure it has the proper secret codes and has not been faked.

Comments

[rain_gryphon]

I'm not at all convinced that "tested positive" is a very useful real-time indicator. As you continue to perform tests, you can gain some idea, but of course the total will inevitably increase, and those who are well today may be sick later, and vice-vera. It may show the tipping point into herd immunity.

Hospital admissions (at least until the hospitals are saturated) seems a better indicator. Deaths are, IMHO, better still, but of course they're a trailing indicator.

Apart from that, how are you and yours? Staying healthy, I hope.

[pyesetz]

It's unfortunate that Waterloo Region does not publish hospital admissions counts.  Even though "avoid overflowing the ICU" is one of the official goals of this War of All Mankind Vs. the Coronavirus, they don't publish how many COVID-19 patients are in the ICU at any one time, just the total admissions ever.  Deaths lag initial symptoms by about 3 weeks in many cases, although I've heard of several cases where some old people "started to feel sick" and then died three days later.

All healthy at my house!  My daughter the germophobe is still working, because her "sandwich artist" job is essential, but she'd rather not.  The rest of us are just waiting this out.

[rain_gryphon]

Going to Subway for the veggie n' cheese is one of the things that I miss, but I'm disinclined to take the chance. There're this absolute plethora of fast-food commercials about how your order is untouched by human hands, but they seem to skirt the more relevant issue of "breathed on by pre-symptomatic carriers".The restaurant industry will have to struggle on without me for the nexr few months.

[beckyway]

From the bottom of my heart, *thank you* for not shopping with us. Thank you for not encouraging your local Subway to stay open, to continue forcing their employees to work.

(And given the amount of pushback I've faced by wearing a mask to work, I think you're right about the problem of your food getting breathed on by carriers. Much as I wish my feelings about sanitation were the norm, the fact is that the odds of you getting a sandwich artist as conscientious as I am are not great.)