Good Morning:
Yesterday Sunday April 12, 2020 was also a FIVE green arrow day! However out of a possible six because we added a new arrow category. Monitoring the greater NYC area and its growth rate relative to the rest of the US. Yesterday that area’s new case rate was 4.5% compared to 5.1% overall.
Both of these are quite encouraging as it shows we have flattened or are flattening the curve.
The one category that didn’t improve from the previous day was number of recoveries. As mentioned in numerous past posts, the latency between a recovery, recording that information and then posting it to the data source, is at best slow and unpredictable. Notice how the recovery rate bounces up, then down then up…almost as if data is being batch processed. It is definitely not posted in real-time.
There was another change to one of the charts, Massachusetts has moved up to the number 3 state in cases and 4th in rate per 100,000. Michigan has dropped out of the top five. We’ve added Massachusetts to that table, replacing Michigan. The combination of greater NYC, Massachusetts and Louisiana (8%) of our population account for 55% of the cases and 65% of the deaths.
While is was critical for our country to impose harsh social-distancing measures, to provide time to help make decisions, relieve pressure on our healthcare system and give us a chance to catch up, going forward with what we are learning, can we design a more precise approach to containing COVID 19?
One might ask what the corridor of NYC to Boston has in common besides close proximity. This area of our country relies, probably most per capita and most likely in number, public transportation. We know collectively that prolonged contact (15 – 20 minutes) with contaminated surfaces then touching one’s face (eyes, nose or mouth) is the prime way the virus travels from human to human. Public transportation that relies on busses, trains and subways, are probably the perfect storm for contamination. It would be hard to imagine a more fertile petri dish, confined areas with many people, trips that last more than ½ hour while holding onto a potentially contaminated surface. Make no mistake we need public transportation, but would it make sense to pause it, until we had a way to eliminate this specific risk from the equation.
The point is, we have more information and understand this virus better than before (although not as much as we may wish) and might be ready to add precision to our approach to better restrict the growth than the more draconian one “everybody stay locked in one’s home.”
Anyway, a good day. That is two in a row!
Have a wonderful day.