We’ve been tracking the Coronavirus data for quite a while. Once we realized that most news sites just update the same page over and over, it was difficult to see trends. The news organizations try to put it into the simplest form (understandably) but being science nerds, we want to play with the data ourselves.
My spread sheet has 3 components:
- Our community data since 3/27 when the first positive case was identified.
- Looking at this data, our curve has not hit its peak. Why would our county rescind the mask order?
- Looking at this data, our curve has not hit its peak. Why would our county rescind the mask order?
- Our community data showing the daily increases in confirmed cases and the 14 day average – the standard for “reopening states” was that the 14 day average needs to decrease.
- Does this look like it is decreasing to you?
- Does this look like it is decreasing to you?
- This 3rd page was started because I was unable to find data showing increases by state on a week to week basis. It was sparked because I did a screenshot of the US map showing county infections on CNN. When I looked a week later, they had changed the scale for the various colors! How can you make a comparison when you keep changing the scale??? Unfortunately, I didn’t anticipate that and did not include the scale on the first one (4/20/2020). Second one was screenshot on 5/8/2020. If you look at Colorado, some of the counties decreased in their color intensity. WHY? Because CNN changed the scale! How can I really see a spread and increase if you make it look “mild”. Also the scale doesn’t make it obvious you are looking at cases per 100,000 of population.
- I only started my 3rd page on 4/28/2020 You’ll notice I added Los Angeles County to the sheet. Did you know Los Angeles County has more people than 41 other states?
- Interesting when you look at this data based on population.
- Interesting when you look at this data based on population.
Haha! I’m a total nerd too! I have a spreadsheet but mine is only the daily totals for 4 counties in my state plus the state total. I’ve noticed that every single time there’s a spike, they conveniently say it’s from an increase in testing. Or they’re calculating it differently or some other lame excuse.
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so you are like me – you’re more locally focused!
Doesn’t it drive you crazy?!?! Who cares if you are testing more people? If they are positive, you now identified an asymptomatic person who is spreading it to a bunch of others.
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Yes!! It drives me crazy! It also drives me crazy that when there were only 50 new cases a day, we weren’t supposed to leave our house but now that there’s 300 new cases a day, let’s open everything up. It’s all so backwards!!
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yep! Why don’t they put people like us in charge!!
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I know, right?!?!?!?
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As a fellow math nerd, I have to say I love the charts and graphs! If only media sources would use something like this, something that shows the actual increase/decrease by a percentage, then maybe more people would get it.
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Thanks!
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And what complicates it further is that now testing is now available so more people will be tested and possibly more positive cases. And in the past, many people had symptoms but tests weren’t available so they just told them to stay home (which means there probably was way more positive than we knew).
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YEP! I heard about the family in Pasadena – they are being considered a “cluster”. Maybe that’s what they are trying to do – minimize spread while opening up businesses.
I’m convinced the number of positive cases is probably double what is reported. Even the death data is inaccurate. They are finding postmortem positive cases since they decided to go back and look at samples from months ago. Are those included??? And now we have the weird symptoms in kids when everyone was focused on older people. Parents may not have even considered their kid had COVID since they get all kinds of minor infections if others didn’t get too sick.
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