Data Without Doctoring

Data Without Doctoring Dr. David Owen 08/13/2020

Morning report: The stars are lining up well today with continued, perhaps even, accelerated drop in covid bed usage in the state and tri-county area and a nice fall in reported deaths (149). The data on the dates of these reported deaths and percent positive tests is still forthcoming. But the data today supports a continued improvement in the M&M statistics. The main question now is why??

With hospitalizations being one of the few data points we get in real time we have to assume the waves of cases over the Memorial Day/demonstration period and the July 4th holiday have already "washed" through the system. ( Add to that, a wave of NH/ALF cases). And with better following of CDC guidelines, particularly with masks, we may now be looking at the new norm until we arrive at HI. In trying to identify the HI in each county the data now suggests we have a way to go. Until we see a significant and SUSTAINED inflection downward in the morbidity curves we cannot hypothesize HI any time soon.

At best, probably 20% of the tri-county population has been infected so we have a way to go to reach, say 40% which would represent an accepted point of HI from published estimates. Conclusion, continued improvement for the state and tri-county area. Tonight's bed report will lend further support to that. ___ www.frankcastingmediagroup.com www.frankmulhall.com