Data Without Doctoring Dr. David Owen 08/28/2020
Morning update: Continued decrease in deaths and hospitalizations is noted. Isolated reports of closing of some floors in PBC due to low volume, which is typical of this time of year anyway. Statewide covid hospitalizations now under 4k. Today's death number is the lowest for Friday in two months. Although the statewide numbers are clearly improving, I'm not yet seeing a downward trend in the tri-county area. The numbers tend to be very volatile on a day to day basis, reflecting issues in reporting, but I believe we will see the beginning of a sustained downtrend in the tri-county area very shortly. The data continues to point to a nice sustained down trend in the severity of the pandemic in the state, not so much due to HI, but rather to people behaving themselves. As I said a few days ago, 41k+ documented cases in PBC severely underestimates the actual incidence which may be 5-10 times as much (more likely closer to 5x). This would represent barely 250k infected in PBC out of a population of 1.5 mill, which is far short of that number needed for HI. So for now, the efforts of our mitigation are being nicely rewarded with declining M&M.
This trend should continue downward until the holiday weekend next week, at which time we'll look for any bounce. ___ www.frankcastingmediagroup.com www.frankmulhall.com