Update to my COVID-19 research

[pyesetz]

It’s been about a month since my last report.  How have things changed?  Here are updated versions of the two epi-curves:

Waterloo, Ontario	Italy

Well, Italy looks to be just about done.  In fact, one doctor said on May 31ˢᵗ that “the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy” because the people testing ‘positive’ today have much lower viral loads than those from a month or two ago.  The government told him to shut up and stop confusing Italians.

Meanwhile, in Waterloo on June 1ˢᵗ, there was another uptick in the slope of the dark-blue curve.  There does not seem to be any “first wave” that is ending.  The nursing-home ‘outbreak’ looks to be over but the spread in the broader ‘community’ continues linearly.  (I don’t know where those vertical grey lines are coming from — my browser or their CMS?)

Once again I have written down some numbers every day for a week:

Date	Total	New	LTC/RH	age 50‒59	age 80+	Active
May 29	1,105	5	627	188	226	91
May 30	1,108	1	(Sunday reports discontinued)
May 31	1,113	5	628	189	226	154
June 1	1,130	10	646	192	226	167
June 2	1,138	6	650	193	227	171
June 3	1,142	3	659	193	228	166
June 4	1,152	7	663	193	228	110
June 5	1,165	13	663	193	228	115
(week)	+60	≈6	+36	+5	+2	+24
(prev)	+123	≈12	+38	+24	+13	−25

The government has decided to stop issuing reports on Sundays.  This isn’t the first time they’ve had a period where they decided to issue fewer than 7 reports per week.  The ‘Total’ and ‘New’ values can be pulled from the epi-curves, but the other numbers are inaccessible for non-report days.  The ‘(prev)’ row is just a copy from my previous report.

Some obvious good news is that the weekly increase in the ‘Total’ is now half of what it was, as is the average daily increase in the non-LTC ‘New’ cases.  This is especially notable because the province recently relaxed their regulations: you can now get tested even if you have no symptoms and are not a healthcare worker.  The case-count increase for my age-group is only ⅕ of what it was, while the increase for the over-80 people is down to ⅙.

The bits of bad news are data-quality issues.  The increase in ‘Total’ is +60, while the ‘New’ non-LTC cases add up to 50 and the LTC figure increased by +38.  Wait, shouldn't the ‘Total’ have increased by 88?

The newly-sick seem to be mostly young people and over half of them work in LTC homes, but the percentage of ever-sick people who are healthcare workers (not shown above but available here) has spent most of the pandemic hovering around 30% but has recently fallen to 25%, implying that a whole bunch of non-healthcare people recently got sick — so where are they in my table?  Most other public-health units report 10%-15% healthcare workers among their sick; I do not know of any explanation for why so many healthcare workers in Waterloo are afflicted.

I’m not sure what is going on with the Active value for May 29ᵗʰ, which seems to be an outlier.  Unfortunately it is based on daily ‘Recovered’ and ‘Deceased’ values that I did not save and can no longer re-check.  If we ignore that entry, then Active decreased by 39 over five days, which would be an improvement over my previous report rather than getting worse as shown in the table.

Meanwhile, Premier Ford has extended all emergency orders until June 19ᵗʰ, including the prohibition on groups larger than five people.  Restaurant dining rooms remain closed, which means restaurant delivery drivers are still needed for the emergency.  The SkipTheDishes app still shows large numbers of available open shifts; in pre-Pandemic times the open shifts were few and snapped up within seconds.  It’s dinnertime right now so UberEats is offering a $1.50 “surge” bonus per order — but their regular rates are still 30% lower than when I started working for them.  Neither of these companies feels the need to offer anything that could be called "hazard pay".  My daughter continues to insist that neither of her older/chronically-ill parents may enter a store and she will do all the shopping while I sit in the car.

So I am tentatively concluding that I should continue to not work for maybe another two weeks.

Comments

[rain_gryphon]

I think your daughter probably has wise advice. I'm wondering if we'll see a big surge over the next week after all the rioting and looting here.

[deffox]

I'm not really excited about the micro extensions. I seem to recall a goal of under 200 cases per day for a goal, but it seems unlikely to drop to that level with the current controls. So it is feeling like being on a parked airplane where they keep saying 20 minutes delay every 20 minutes.

I've been doing my part following all the precautions, but now with one exception. Yesterday I went to a large protest at the US border. It grew to six times the expected size making social distancing impossible.