15 ms·

Where coronavirus hospitalizations are falling

44 points by laurex 6y ago

chasd00 6y ago
only 44 states are shown (if I counted correctly) and GA is missing which opened the earliest. anyone know why some states, especially GA, were omitted? EDIT: i must have missed it, from a comment below, "It says 'Among the 40 states that have consistently provided data'"
- JadeNB 6y ago
  It says "Among the 40 states that have consistently provided data" (and, indeed, I count 40, not 44; missing are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, and Tennessee).
  - henriquez 6y ago
    Florida and Georgia seem really important since they opened up far enough back that we should be able to get a sense of how their shutdowns impacted infection rates.
    - danesparza 6y ago
      Considering I live in Georgia -- yeah, I agree with you. There is tremendous social pressure here to just 'get things back to normal' without any sense that anybody is taking the virus seriously (or is capable of understanding its effects in the state). Our testing rate is at 3% of the population. That's within a statistical margin of error. Suggesting that it's 'safe to reopen the state' without having any evidence to back it up is irresponsible in my book. If I sound nervous, it's because I am.
    - danesparza 6y ago
      This is just bananas: https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we-count-cases-in-georgia https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we-count-... "A number of friends and visitors to the site have noticed a discrepancy in how we count “new” cases and how the state of Georgia is counting new cases. For example, on April 21st, Covid Mapping Project reports 934 “new” cases. Covid Tracking, a companion site run by a team from The Atlantic, doesn’t report differentials but they do report a day by day tracking of cases. On April 20, they report Georgia had 18,947 positive cases and on April 21st they reported 19,881 cases. A differential of 934. Same as us. However, if you got the GA DPH website (where most of us source our data), you’ll see 10 “new” cases. That was later revised to 84. And then 138. It's a moving number that will likely change every day for at least a week. Quite different than the 934 we’re reporting."
- sb8244 6y ago
  Georgia has provided data twice a day. I wonder why it wasn't included? Here's the dashboard I use: https://dashboards.securedatakit.com/public/dashboard/e430d0a4-0135-4211-95f7-0a089582f620?fbclid=IwAR2_DSc34GKJVl3ftp1iKoZe7I8a5LdivS24QzV https://dashboards.securedatakit.com/public/dashboard/e430d0...
Munky-Necan 6y ago
I'm wondering how good fo a marker this is. We've already had people with significant heart attack symptoms refuse to go to the hospital, so is a similar trend happening here with COVID? One thing I find a little suspect about this article, although I do respect Axios, is that hospital usage in Texas has not peaked yet and is currently rising (https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texas https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texa...).
- chasd00 6y ago
  just to further complicate things and show how stats are all over the place, the Texas Tribune has hospitalizations flat (even slightly decreasing on average) since about May 1 https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus-cases-map/?_ga=2.10297781.1282549010.1589667988-730639434.1588979647 https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronaviru...
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator. The incubation period is 2 weeks, people grow sick enough to be hospitalized in week 3, and death occurs in week 4 or 5. That said, excess deaths are a reliable number, you can't fudge deaths.
    - lhuser123 6y ago
      I know someone who was recently hospitalized(Texas, US) but was not counted as a coronavirus patient because the test were negative(they didn’t test for anti bodies). The illness resembles almost everything I have read about people with complications from the virus. Doctors & nurses when asked, they all say that for the anti bodies test, the patient would have to go some place else.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > That said, excess deaths are a reliable number, you can't fudge deaths. Excess deaths aren't a reliable indicator of COVID-19 impact because of post hoc ergo propter hoc problems.
rb808 6y ago
With the many covid websites out there its surprisingly difficult to find the information you want. https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-ny/ https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-ny/ is quite good in that it shows the total number of people in hostpital over time, and change in intubations. NY State only.
standardUser 6y ago
"No more than 25% of hospital beds in any state are occupied by coronavirus patients." There seem to be two camps on this topic. One says that this is great, and we should continue every effort possible to stop the spread, presumably for an unlimited number of months or even years. That means staying locked down with minimal economic activity and somehow dealing with the consequences as they come. This is the "wait for the vaccine" camp, which I find hard to join because even if a safe vaccine can be created, it could be a year or two before it is sufficiently tested and deployed. California seems to be leading this camp in the US. The second camp says that excess healthcare capacity means we should begin reopening the economy until capacity becomes strained. This is the "let the virus spread" camp, and implicit in the argument is that we should allow more people to die from the virus. This camp is winning. Most states and Western nations have started to ease restrictions knowing full well that it means the virus will spread. The hope is that less stringent restrictions can still allow the rate of transmission to be controlled enough to avoid catastrophe. (There is also a third, fringe camp in the US of right-wingers, and while it is easy to dismiss them, they are actually winning in states like Georgia and Texas) My understanding at the start of lockdowns was that these were intended to "bend the curve" so we could get control of the situation and then allow the virus to spread at a rate that would not overwhelm healthcare capacity. But more and more people I know seem to be in the "wait for a vaccine" camp. Personally, my imagination struggles to comprehend what another 12+ months of lockdowns would mean for civilization. The loss of life from disease, though obviously abhorrent, is actually a concept my brain can manage (which is not to imply it has more merit, just an honest observation).
- 0xB31B1B 6y ago
  I don’t think this framing is correct. No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place. California’s reopen plan is gated by test and trace. It’s What every other developed country in the world is doing to allow them to reopen. We see this framed by right wingers as “stay closed” vs “open up” because they understand that this administration isn’t capable of launching an effective spread prevention program and are now solely focusing on shifting the blame.
lucb1e 6y ago
... within the USA
claudeganon 6y ago
It’s staggering to me how much people in the US have an normalized this level of death and injury, driven by a failed state response, when counter examples like South Korea and Taiwan exist. The U.S. has 86,541 coronavirus deaths. South Korea has 260. Even if we adjust for population, we expect the US to have 1700, were we following South Korea’s example. How is it that people have just swung fully into embracing our having 50 times as many deaths as we could have prevented? How is it that people believe the rush to “reopen,” without implementing measures at the level of countries like South Korea and Taiwan, won’t result in an even worse outcome?
- derekp7 6y ago
  I think it is because even with the current measures, we still have the 86,000 deaths. And at this point, people think the South Korea style measures won't work (too high of a case load, the cat is already out of the bag), and people are getting lock down fatigue. So one way of looking at it -- no matter what we do, some large percentage (say 70%) of the population will get infected, and a percentage of them will die. By continuing the lock downs, those infections get pushed down the road a bit but they won't be prevented. The only thing that lock downs are good for is to keep the health system from being overwhelmed (where a larger percentage of those infected will die due to lack of resources). Now my question, is the above a reasonable set of assumptions? I don't see it spelled out like that anywhere, but reading between the lines that seems like what the pro reopening people are saying. Now, what I'd personally like to see, is instead of a full re-opening, is an order that says any job that can be done remotely, the employer must allow the employees to do remote. Because there are a number of cases I've seen reported here where people were forced into the office just because management wanted to see butts in seats.
  - greedo 6y ago
    We know lockdowns help keep the growth rate manageable. What we don't know is what will happen to the economy once the lockdowns fade. My gut is that short of more direct Federal aid to individuals (in the form of checks), we'll see people forced back to work as businesses re-open. Consumer spending will still be shit, since no one but fools will be going to football games, theaters, anywhere with crowds. And people will be clinging to their money. So the velocity of money will dwindle. And unless the government indemnifies businesses against lawsuits arising from COVID infections, businesses will be slow to re-open as well. Wrongful death lawsuits for failing to provide a safe work environment will be very popular.
kippinitreal 6y ago
Isn’t “percentage of occupied beds w/ covid” a terrible metric? As states open up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the denominator will inevitably increase and this will appear to go down regardless of any positive change. What is wrong with the much simpler metric of “number of beds used by covid patients”?
- DFHippie 6y ago
  It seems like what you want is the percentage of hospital beds dedicated to covid patients, or perhaps the percentage of beds unoccupied, since the purpose of the curve flattening effort is to keep the health care system from collapsing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Isn’t “percentage of occupied beds w/ covid” a terrible metric? It's not perfect, but in terms of the readily available data, it's not terrible. > As states open up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the denominator will inevitably increase OTOH, there's a credible argument that that is a kind of positive progress itself. And, no, it's not inevitable that the denominator will go up if COVID already has hospitals at capacity. > What is wrong with the much simpler metric of “number of beds used by covid patients”? That's a good measure for any state, but bad for comparing conditions among states. Share of available hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients might be better, but “available” is not always clear since physical capacity and staffing and other support may not yield the same maximum. Because of required staffing ratios, etc.
m0zg 6y ago
Notably missing is Georgia, which opened up weeks ago, and where both the new cases and deaths continued to fall. In fact GA is missing from the news in general, unlike 2 weeks ago, when everyone was predicting a massive explosion in new cases.
- kgin 6y ago
  Not sure I understand

44 points by laurex 6y ago

only 44 states are shown (if I counted correctly) and GA is missing which opened the earliest. anyone know why some states, especially GA, were omitted? EDIT: i must have missed it, from a comment below, "It says 'Among the 40 states that have consistently provided data'"

JadeNB 6y ago
It says "Among the 40 states that have consistently provided data" (and, indeed, I count 40, not 44; missing are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, and Tennessee).
- henriquez 6y ago
  Florida and Georgia seem really important since they opened up far enough back that we should be able to get a sense of how their shutdowns impacted infection rates.
  - danesparza 6y ago
    Considering I live in Georgia -- yeah, I agree with you. There is tremendous social pressure here to just 'get things back to normal' without any sense that anybody is taking the virus seriously (or is capable of understanding its effects in the state). Our testing rate is at 3% of the population. That's within a statistical margin of error. Suggesting that it's 'safe to reopen the state' without having any evidence to back it up is irresponsible in my book. If I sound nervous, it's because I am.
  - danesparza 6y ago
    This is just bananas: https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we-count-cases-in-georgia https://www.covidmappingproject.com/dashboards/how-we-count-... "A number of friends and visitors to the site have noticed a discrepancy in how we count “new” cases and how the state of Georgia is counting new cases. For example, on April 21st, Covid Mapping Project reports 934 “new” cases. Covid Tracking, a companion site run by a team from The Atlantic, doesn’t report differentials but they do report a day by day tracking of cases. On April 20, they report Georgia had 18,947 positive cases and on April 21st they reported 19,881 cases. A differential of 934. Same as us. However, if you got the GA DPH website (where most of us source our data), you’ll see 10 “new” cases. That was later revised to 84. And then 138. It's a moving number that will likely change every day for at least a week. Quite different than the 934 we’re reporting."
sb8244 6y ago
Georgia has provided data twice a day. I wonder why it wasn't included? Here's the dashboard I use: https://dashboards.securedatakit.com/public/dashboard/e430d0a4-0135-4211-95f7-0a089582f620?fbclid=IwAR2_DSc34GKJVl3ftp1iKoZe7I8a5LdivS24QzV https://dashboards.securedatakit.com/public/dashboard/e430d0...

Munky-Necan 6y ago

I'm wondering how good fo a marker this is. We've already had people with significant heart attack symptoms refuse to go to the hospital, so is a similar trend happening here with COVID? One thing I find a little suspect about this article, although I do respect Axios, is that hospital usage in Texas has not peaked yet and is currently rising (https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texas https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texa...).

chasd00 6y ago
just to further complicate things and show how stats are all over the place, the Texas Tribune has hospitalizations flat (even slightly decreasing on average) since about May 1 https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus-cases-map/?_ga=2.10297781.1282549010.1589667988-730639434.1588979647 https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronaviru...
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator. The incubation period is 2 weeks, people grow sick enough to be hospitalized in week 3, and death occurs in week 4 or 5. That said, excess deaths are a reliable number, you can't fudge deaths.
  - lhuser123 6y ago
    I know someone who was recently hospitalized(Texas, US) but was not counted as a coronavirus patient because the test were negative(they didn’t test for anti bodies). The illness resembles almost everything I have read about people with complications from the virus. Doctors & nurses when asked, they all say that for the anti bodies test, the patient would have to go some place else.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > That said, excess deaths are a reliable number, you can't fudge deaths. Excess deaths aren't a reliable indicator of COVID-19 impact because of post hoc ergo propter hoc problems.

rb808 6y ago

With the many covid websites out there its surprisingly difficult to find the information you want. https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-ny/ https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-ny/ is quite good in that it shows the total number of people in hostpital over time, and change in intubations. NY State only.

standardUser 6y ago

"No more than 25% of hospital beds in any state are occupied by coronavirus patients." There seem to be two camps on this topic. One says that this is great, and we should continue every effort possible to stop the spread, presumably for an unlimited number of months or even years. That means staying locked down with minimal economic activity and somehow dealing with the consequences as they come. This is the "wait for the vaccine" camp, which I find hard to join because even if a safe vaccine can be created, it could be a year or two before it is sufficiently tested and deployed. California seems to be leading this camp in the US. The second camp says that excess healthcare capacity means we should begin reopening the economy until capacity becomes strained. This is the "let the virus spread" camp, and implicit in the argument is that we should allow more people to die from the virus. This camp is winning. Most states and Western nations have started to ease restrictions knowing full well that it means the virus will spread. The hope is that less stringent restrictions can still allow the rate of transmission to be controlled enough to avoid catastrophe. (There is also a third, fringe camp in the US of right-wingers, and while it is easy to dismiss them, they are actually winning in states like Georgia and Texas) My understanding at the start of lockdowns was that these were intended to "bend the curve" so we could get control of the situation and then allow the virus to spread at a rate that would not overwhelm healthcare capacity. But more and more people I know seem to be in the "wait for a vaccine" camp. Personally, my imagination struggles to comprehend what another 12+ months of lockdowns would mean for civilization. The loss of life from disease, though obviously abhorrent, is actually a concept my brain can manage (which is not to imply it has more merit, just an honest observation).

0xB31B1B 6y ago
I don’t think this framing is correct. No one wants things to be shut down until we have a vaccine, they want it to be shut down until we have a test and trace infrastructure in place. California’s reopen plan is gated by test and trace. It’s What every other developed country in the world is doing to allow them to reopen. We see this framed by right wingers as “stay closed” vs “open up” because they understand that this administration isn’t capable of launching an effective spread prevention program and are now solely focusing on shifting the blame.

lucb1e 6y ago

... within the USA

claudeganon 6y ago

It’s staggering to me how much people in the US have an normalized this level of death and injury, driven by a failed state response, when counter examples like South Korea and Taiwan exist. The U.S. has 86,541 coronavirus deaths. South Korea has 260. Even if we adjust for population, we expect the US to have 1700, were we following South Korea’s example. How is it that people have just swung fully into embracing our having 50 times as many deaths as we could have prevented? How is it that people believe the rush to “reopen,” without implementing measures at the level of countries like South Korea and Taiwan, won’t result in an even worse outcome?

derekp7 6y ago
I think it is because even with the current measures, we still have the 86,000 deaths. And at this point, people think the South Korea style measures won't work (too high of a case load, the cat is already out of the bag), and people are getting lock down fatigue. So one way of looking at it -- no matter what we do, some large percentage (say 70%) of the population will get infected, and a percentage of them will die. By continuing the lock downs, those infections get pushed down the road a bit but they won't be prevented. The only thing that lock downs are good for is to keep the health system from being overwhelmed (where a larger percentage of those infected will die due to lack of resources). Now my question, is the above a reasonable set of assumptions? I don't see it spelled out like that anywhere, but reading between the lines that seems like what the pro reopening people are saying. Now, what I'd personally like to see, is instead of a full re-opening, is an order that says any job that can be done remotely, the employer must allow the employees to do remote. Because there are a number of cases I've seen reported here where people were forced into the office just because management wanted to see butts in seats.
- greedo 6y ago
  We know lockdowns help keep the growth rate manageable. What we don't know is what will happen to the economy once the lockdowns fade. My gut is that short of more direct Federal aid to individuals (in the form of checks), we'll see people forced back to work as businesses re-open. Consumer spending will still be shit, since no one but fools will be going to football games, theaters, anywhere with crowds. And people will be clinging to their money. So the velocity of money will dwindle. And unless the government indemnifies businesses against lawsuits arising from COVID infections, businesses will be slow to re-open as well. Wrongful death lawsuits for failing to provide a safe work environment will be very popular.

kippinitreal 6y ago

Isn’t “percentage of occupied beds w/ covid” a terrible metric? As states open up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the denominator will inevitably increase and this will appear to go down regardless of any positive change. What is wrong with the much simpler metric of “number of beds used by covid patients”?

DFHippie 6y ago
It seems like what you want is the percentage of hospital beds dedicated to covid patients, or perhaps the percentage of beds unoccupied, since the purpose of the curve flattening effort is to keep the health care system from collapsing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Isn’t “percentage of occupied beds w/ covid” a terrible metric? It's not perfect, but in terms of the readily available data, it's not terrible. > As states open up and elective surgeries, car accidents etc increase the denominator will inevitably increase OTOH, there's a credible argument that that is a kind of positive progress itself. And, no, it's not inevitable that the denominator will go up if COVID already has hospitals at capacity. > What is wrong with the much simpler metric of “number of beds used by covid patients”? That's a good measure for any state, but bad for comparing conditions among states. Share of available hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients might be better, but “available” is not always clear since physical capacity and staffing and other support may not yield the same maximum. Because of required staffing ratios, etc.

m0zg 6y ago

Notably missing is Georgia, which opened up weeks ago, and where both the new cases and deaths continued to fall. In fact GA is missing from the news in general, unlike 2 weeks ago, when everyone was predicting a massive explosion in new cases.

kgin 6y ago
Not sure I understand