Data Without Doctoring Dr. David Owen 09/11/2020
Late morning update: Continued perplexing high death number today (178) with continuing declining hospitalizations statewide. Hospitalizations for covid, however have stabilized in the tricounty area, in the sense that they are no longer decreasing. This may be the result of the past Labor Day holiday and if so, then this is a minimal consequence. Recorded deaths continue to be high from Dade county compared to Broward and PBC. Actually taking into account the respective populations Dade appears to be disproportionately higher, which is consistent with the much higher number of hospitalizations seen in July in that county. But Broward was also noted to be high in hospitalizations at the same time and the possibility was raised that patients were being transferred from Dade into south Broward hospitals. This likely happened and would account for high Broward hospitalizations but disproportionately lower death numbers. In short, many Dade county patients died in Broward hospitals. Interestingly after 2 months, this is being confirmed by just looking at the raw numbers. All in all, continued disconnect between hospitalizations and deaths which will resolve. I still see no indication of any spike secondary to the Labor Day holiday.
One final observation for today. All of the deaths reported today have been assigned to their respective dates in the past. The last week of July and first week of Aug. are now considered the apex of the pandemic with daily deaths over 200 for almost half of those days. This time period was one month after the time span that daily positive tests rose to well over 10k consistently and attests to the 1+ month lag in deaths which we see after increases in positive testing. ___ www.frankcastingmediagroup.com www.frankmulhall.com