David's Covid-19 Update Page

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Good evening all,

I am sorry about not posting things recently, but the data is just hard to analyze. In the early days of the pandemic, there was consistent and clean data to interpret what was transpiring. Now, everything is already produced in charts, and it is very hard to find places with complete data.

Today, I did perform some analysis on the charts of data available, and I can say that cases are skyrocketing in the state of Georgia. When you look at the first chart below, you can see the historical cases that have reached the previous peak last week. As the holiday weekend passes, the expectation is that peak will bounce back up through the next two weeks.

Another concern is that the hospitalization rates and utilization of ICU and IP beds is now at the highest in the pandemic. As of yesterday, there were less than 200 ICU beds in the state, and the number of patients hospitalized is the highest yet. (Feel free to look at chart 2 and 3 below. )

Now comes the vaccinated versus non-vaccinated differences in cases and deaths in the state of Georgia. When I set the counties in the state in quartiles from highest vaccinated, to the mid level to mid-low to the lowest level, there is a stark difference in case rates per 10k population and deaths per 10k.

In the bottom table below, you will see that the highest vaccinated group of counties is pinned at a total compliance rate of 44%. In this population, the number of cases per 10k is 39, while in the lowest counties (24% vaccinated) the cases per 10k is 55. That is an increase of 39%.

As we shift to deaths in the groups of counties, deaths in the most vaccinated counties per 10k are .33, while the least vaccinated counties are over .43, which is an increase of 33%.

As stated earlier, the data is quite difficult to analyze these days, and I am highly suspicious of the results, but I can say with certainty, the number of people being tested is up, the number of cases is continuing to climb, the number of people in the hospital is increasing to the point that rooms will be running very low for the most critical patients. This will result in more deaths of both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.

Talk you you later,

David

So the headlines are big about inflation, and how that will cause problems in the US and the world. While growth rates in prices from 2020 to 2021 are up, the news organizations have forgotten to state that prices declined last year over 2019.

Now, I could be wrong, but total price changes from 2019 to 2020 dropped .4%, with the largest drop in Transportation dropping 11% (think airlines, new and used cars,) Clothing dropped 10% last year, while Medical Care rose 3.9% and Food and Beverages increased 3.7%.

Now for 2020 to 2021, the previous decline in transportation came back, and it increased another 3.2% due to limited supplies of automobiles and airlines increasing prices. Second to transportation, clothing climbed 4.3%, which is still not making up the 10% decline in 2019 to 2020. Overall, the yearly inflation rate over the past two years is trending at 1.8% when all prices are taken into account.

Now, these numbers differ quite a bit the national numbers, because I am reporting the numbers for the SE US only. And, when I look at the information for specifically the Atlanta Metro area, the largest year over year increase is related to transportation and housing, but the overall numbers are much lower than the national averages.

Here is a chart:

Following below is an update that I produced in response to a person's comments on Facebook this evening. As you all may know, I try to study data versus getting caught up in political issues, and when I saw people spouting incorrect assumptions on the vaccines, I downloaded data and this is what I came up with:

Alright all- I've crunched quite a bit of data this evening, and I'd like to show you the numbers.

There are currently 161M people that have received at least one dose of the vaccines. Of those people, 24,706 reported adverse effects as of yesterday (that is .0153% -so much less than 1%, or one in 6,517 vaccines administered.) There have been 1,491 hospitalizations .0009% of vaccinated people, with an average length of stay of 4.6 days, which is less than 9 for patients with the actual illness. Of the 24,706 issues, there were 276 deaths (which is a death rate of 1.1% of those with an issue - or .000017% of everybody vaccinated, compared to 1.8% for those dying of the illness.)

Now, if we shift the analysis of looking at the total population by 10,000, there was an infection rate of 998 infections per 10,000 people, for the vaccines the number is 1.53 issues per 10,000 people (that is because 5 times more people have received the vaccine than had the illness.)

As I look at this initial data, there are issues reported with the vaccines, but the illness burden compared to catching Covid-19 is much lower (including a reduction in number of hospitalized days per incident, the number of ED visits and the number and percentages of deaths.) I would invite anybody that is trying to grab other headlines to download the 260MB file, and study the actual data that feeds the information vs spouting incorrect information to the public. That type of misinformation will cause more harm than the vaccines may cause.

Here are some screenshots with the data:

Over the past year of the pandemic, I have strived to provide non-biased information for you to study data and come to your own conclusions. I have enjoyed looking at this data, speaking to so many of you, and actually becoming friends with a few of you on Facebook too. But, within a few weeks of President Biden taking office, the location that I receive all of the state and national data announced they are shutting down their data sharing initiative. As a part of this initiative, the website is stating that the CDC and Health and Human Services have much better reporting under the new administration, so they recommend that we report on the results as published from those sites.

Due to this change, I will no longer have access to data to calculate the results, but I will continue to try to find results at some point in the future. In the mean-time, this will be my last post.

Thank you for all of your support and good luck!!

Here are some screenshots of the site that I receive information, and the other recommended sites:

Happy Valentine's Sunday All!

The results this week are continuing to show improvement in cases and hospitalizations over the Christmas peak, but the deaths have yet to start falling, and this is becoming quite concerning. So let's study some numbers..

For the US:
1. Tests are down 6.2% over the past week dropping from 8.6M to 8.1M
2. The positivity rate has dropped from 9.7% down to 8% (a week over week decline of 17.2%)
3. Total cases are down 22.3% dropping from 843k to 655k, which is the lowest 7 day total since November 1
4. Inpatient patients have dropped almost 18%, dropping from 84,233 to 69,283 in the last while, while the number of ICU patients has dropped to 14,396 from 17,093 last week (a drop of 15.8%)
5. Deaths are still near the peak, but it seems that there is a small 3% decline from 22,541 to 21,572 in the last week

For the state of GA:
1. The number of tests are down 1.6%, dropping from 203k to 200k
2. The positive test rate declined 18.2% (from 15.5% to 12.7%)
3. The two numbers caused the new cases to drop 19.5% in the last week (dropping from 31.5k to 25.4k- the lowest level since the last week of November)
4. The big number for the state is the drop in the number of hospitalizations dropping 20.1% in the past week (from 4,239 to 3,385- the lowest level since mid-December)
5. Deaths have dropped 15% in the past week (dropping from 894 to 760, which is the lowest level in over a month)

As we head into the second week post SuperBowl, if there were to be a bounce in cases, it would start to show this week, so let's hope that is not the case.

Now, for a few charts and graphs for your entertainment purposes:
Have a great week!

Happy Friday One and All!!

In what may be a political post of sorts, the results have improved drastically over the past three weeks (which sort of means, changes three weeks ago in policies could not be impacting these numbers yet.) So- enough with my political post, and now I'm on to the great results!

For the US:
1. Total tests are down 21% from last week dropping from 11.4M to 9M
2. Positive test rate has increased 3% climbing from 9.5% to 9.8%
3. That means total cases are down almost 19% dropping from 1.1M to 878k in the past week (the lowest amount of new cases since the 2nd week of November)
4. Hospitalizations are down 14.5% dropping from 101k last week to 86k this week (dropping to the lowest level since the week before Thanksgiving)
5. ICU patients has dropped almost 12% declining from 19,609 to 17,284
6. Deaths are flat week over week (a difference of 75,) but this is the slowest growth rate since the weeks before Thanksgiving in November.

Based off of the large declines in cases over the past three weeks and the recent continual declines in hospitalizations, next week should be the first week when deaths start dropping. Within two weeks, there should be a very material impact on deaths occurring.

For the state of GA:

1. Total tests are down 14.8% from last week dropping from 256k to 219k (the number of tests are the lowest since Thanksgiving week)
2. Positive test rate has declined 15% from 18% to 15%
3. With the two declines, that means total cases are down almost 28% dropping from 46,000 to 33,400 (the lowest number of cases since the week of Thanksgiving)
4. Currently hospitalized patients has dropped 11.3% from 4,777 to 4,239, which is the lowest number of patients since the week of Christmas

I do continue to believe that with less large gatherings occurring plus the vaccines the numbers will continue to improve. The only thing to consider moving forward may be the new variants, and how they will impact future cases.

How about some screenshots and charts for the weekend!!

Another week, another mostly good report on the illness.

For the US:
1. Testing is down 11.2% dropping from 10.9M to 9.7M in the last week
2. The positive test rate has declined from 12.3% to 11.5% resulting in total cases dropping 17% dropping from 1.3M to 1.1M
3. The number of patients in the hospital has declined for the second consecutive week dropping from 122k to 107k, which is a drop of 12.4%
4. The number of patients in the ICU has also continued to decline, dropping from 22,800 to 20,500, or -10.1%
5. The one area that has continued to get worse are deaths which has increased from 21,300 last week to 22,800 this week, or an increase of 7%. Another issue related to deaths centers around the death rate, which is now over 2%, for the first time since August of 2020.

For the state of GA:
1. Total tests are down a little, dropping from 269k last week to 262k this week, a decline of 2.4%
2. The positive test rate has dropped 9%, dropping from 15.2% to 13.9%
3. The changes in testing and the positive test rate has caused the number of new cases to decline 11.3% from 41k to 36.4k in the past week
4. The number of patients listed in the hospital has declined 12.3% from 5,800 to 5,000
5. Unlike the nation, deaths in GA are down 11.3%, dropping from 975 last week to 865 this week. While this may be great news, it is still the second highest number of deaths in a week, since tracking started.

I've included some of the charts that I forgot last week, and there are some amazing changes in seven day case trends, hospitalizations, etc.

Have a great week!!

The beginning trends of good news from last week have carried over to this full week. While this makes sense based upon typical holiday cycles, this level is quite surprising.

So let's study the numbers for the US:
1. Testing is flat to last week, 10.886M to 10.901M, the positivity rate has plummeted from 15.1% last week to 12% this week. This is the lowest rate since before Thanksgiving.
2. The drop in the positivity rate has caused the number of new cases to drop by 20% in the past week from 1.64M to 1.3M.
3. This build upon last weeks small declines has caused current inpatient admissions to drop from 128.9k to 119.9k this week, a drop of 7%.
4. ICU admissions has dropped by 6.6% from 23.9k to 22.3k this week.
5. Deaths have also dropped by 8.3% from 3,900 to 3,878.

Based upon test decline trends, it is possible to see hospitalizations drop below 100,000 within the next week and half or so.

The results for the state of GA are trending well too, but not quite as drastic:
1. The number of tests climbed by 17% from 240k to 271k, while the positivity rate plunged 32% from 21.4% to 14.9%, which is trending near mid-December numbers.
2. The number of new cases dropped by 20% from 51k last week to 40.5k this week.
3. The number of hospitalized patients has dropped a little over 3.5%, from 6,100 to 5,700
4. The number of deaths has continued to climb week over week, with an increase of 22.7% from 745 to 914.

Given the rate of decline for new cases, it is possible to see hospitalizations drop substantially over the next week and half, and the deaths could be reduced by over 50%.

All of this is good news, and this mixed with the vaccinations should continue to improve the results. The one thing to watch out for over the next month is the SuperBowl coming up in two weeks. Unsure of if people will host parties as usual this year, but this should still cause an uptick in cases, and utilization down the line.

Talk to you later, and I hope that you have a good weekend!

Good Sunday Evening!

I know that it has been a while, since I have posted an update, but in the mean while, there are some hints at positive numbers.

For the US:
- Number of tests, testing is up 11.2% week over week, climbing from 9.7M to 10.9M this past week. The positive test rate has plummeted from 17.3% last week to 14.1% this week, which is the lowest level since the week of Christmas.
- Total new cases for the last week has declined from 1.67M to 1.54M, for a decrease of 8.9%.
- The reduction in case growth has started to contribute to a small decline in Inpatient and ICU utilization, with total inpatient stays dropping 4.4% from 130.7k last week to 126.1k this week. These numbers are still much higher than a month ago, when there were 110k patients in the hospital. The number of patients in the ICU has dropped 1.6%, from 23.7k to 23.5k.
- The number of deaths has continued to increase week over week, with the number climbing 12.5% from 21,784 deaths to 23,241 deaths. This has an average number of deaths of 3,320 per day.

As I shift to the state of GA, the results have yet to improve like the national numbers.
- Testing is up 30.6% from 182k last week to 255k this week, which is the highest number of tests in the state, since tracking began. This increase in testing has caused the positive test rate to decline from 24.5% to 17.9% in the past week.
- New cases have declined from 47.2k to 45.8k, or 3%.
- The number of patients hospitalized has remained flat at 5,900 for the past two weeks.
- The number of deaths has skyrocketed to 834 in the past week, which is an increase of 68% from 497 last week.

As we head into the third week post holiday, we should continue to see the weekly growth rates in cases to drop, hospitalizations should remain flat to a small decline, number of ICUs should still be high, and I would expect the deaths to still be high for another three or more weeks.

I also added a couple of new charts that demonstrate just about everything in the US in terms of per 100k population. I have a chart the shows the number of cases per 100k by state map for this current week vs last week, and the number of deaths per 100k. The second chart shows the number of patients hospitalized per 100k and the second chart shows the number of current ICUs per 100k. For the ICU per 100k data, there are multiple states that do not display that information, so you will notice those with a shading of blue.

As of now, I have not found a really good data source with weekly vaccination information, but I will try to map that out shortly.

Have a good week!!

Today's weekend update will have the typical results (which if you don't want to read it all- the results stink!!), but I'm going to start with a little prediction of numbers through the end of January.

As I have studied trend rates after holidays, there have been a few consistent themes. Within 7 days of the holiday day (weekend,) the week over week growth rates are typically the highest. The next seven days have a small dip down, and then another smaller increase by the end of the second week. The growth rate is still growing at a much lower rate over the next two weeks. In the chart below, the areas highlighted in red are the week of the holiday dating back to Labor Day through New Years Day, and the area highlighted in yellow are the subsequent week to 10 days.

Given the week difference between Christmas and New Years, I am anticipating with an increase in testing this week that the number of new cases and the positive test/growth rate will continue to climb. This will also impact the hospitalizations to the point of widespread 100%+ capacity issues and ICU utilization. It is my goal later today or tomorrow to show by state, the hospitalizations per 100k people.

Another issue that will be present over the next three weeks will be the skyrocketing number of deaths. It is possible that we could see 5,000+ deaths in a day by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, and the overall number of deaths in a week could be over 30,000.

A detailed weekly write up will occur a little later today, but I have a new puppy and it is my turn to play with him......

The results of Covid-19 are about what was predicted last week. The number of cases keeps growing, the number of hospitalizations keep growing, and the number of deaths are now averaging the highest yet.

Here are some numbers for the US:
1. Tests are still anemic at a 1.7% growth from 8.78M to 8.93M this week.
2. The positive test rate increased from 14.3% last week to 16.9% this week (or an increase of 18.3%)
3. Total cases are up 20.4% from 1.25M to 1.51M
4. Hospitalizations are up 5.2% from 124.6k last week to 131.2k this week, which means 8.7% of cases are leading to hospitalization (which is down from 9.9% last week.)
5. Number of patient in ICU is the highest number yet at 23.5k, which is up 5.7% from last week's 22.8k.
6. Deaths over the past 7 day have accelerated by 20.4% from 15.4k last week to 18.7k this week.

Between the increases in cases, hospitalizations and ICU patients, the death count should continue to escalate over the next two weeks or more.

For the state of GA, here are some results:
1. Tests are down for a 2nd consecutive week, dropping by 1.4% from 232k to 228.6k, while the positive test rate is now approaching some of the highest rates since last March and April at 19.5%.
2. Infections are up 31.6% in the past week, climbing from 33.8k to 44.5k, which is the highest weekly number since we have been tracking information.
3. Hospitalized patients is up 16.6% from last week increasing from 4,839 to 5,642.
4. Weekly deaths have declined a little bit week over week, but the results for today has over 100 deaths reported (the highest one day total yet), so next week's numbers should be very bad for the state.

Similar to the nation, the state of GA should continue to see increased cases, hospitalizations and ultimately deaths over the next month.

As I shift to some other states information, I'll focus on cases per 100k. With the national average over 450, there are some states are are well beyond that number of the following map, you'll see that the biggest outbreak is occurring in the Southwest through the Southern states, with the average in the hardest hit states at over 600 cases per 100k.

Happy New Year All!!

As predicted earlier in the week, the numbers are coming in rather blah, so let's talk about things:

For the US:
1. Tests are down week over week from 9.57M to 8.51M (11.1%), while the positive test rate has climbed to 15.5% from 13.8% last week. The current 15.5% is the highest rate since late April, so the spread is very heavy at this time.
2. While the number of tests are down, and the positive test rate is up, this has caused total new cases over the past week to climb a rather small amount 0.3%.
3. Hospitalizations have continued their climb, by rising to over 125,000 over the past three days, which is a 5.1% increase over last week. At the same time, the number of patients in ICU has continued to climb by 3.7%, rising from 22.4k to 23.3k. These numbers have also pushed the percent of cases resulting in a hospitalization from 9% last week to 9.5% this week, and the percent of cases that result in an ICU stay has climbed from 1.7% to 1.76% this week.
4. Nationwide deaths are looked to caught up to the delay in reporting over the past few days, with total deaths now up 2.5% week over week, rising from 16.8k to 17.3k, with total deaths reported on Wednesday near 4,000 for the highest number of deaths in one day.

For the state of GA:
1. New tests have decreased from 285.7k last week to 212.2k this week, or a decline of 25.5%. This has been offset by the positive test rate jumping by almost 40% from 12.9% last week to 18.1% this week.
2. Total new cases are up 4.1%, rising from 36.8k to 38.3k in the last week.
3. Hospitalizations have increased to some of the highest numbers yet to almost 4,900, which is an increase of 16% since last week's 4,216.
4. This increase in hospitalizations has shifted to a sizable increase in deaths over the past week. This has increased 9.4% from 299 to 327. Based off of the increased hospitalizations, death rates should continue to climb over the next two weeks.

As I look at the number of cases per 100k for the last 7 days, there are some states that are having very heavy spread. In the second chart below, you will see:
1. CA has jumped to over 633 per 100k, with the national average just over 400.
2. KS has jumped to 2nd place with 619
3. AZ has broken back into the top ten with 595
4. TN still likes to hold onto a top 5 position with 589
5. WV has now made a top five showing for the first time.
6. Some other states in the top 10 include- UT, MA, MS, AL and OK

There will be more to come later, but in the meantime, people should be aware of the heavy spread rates of the virus, and aware that people are being hospitalized and dying at a higher rate since seen in the early days.

Here are some charts for you:

As we head into another holiday weekend, the results are inconsistent, and it does appear that things are still bad, so be careful if you read things that say things are getting better. Here are a few key items:

For the US:
1. The number of cases week over week has declined 15.4% (from 1.48M to 1.25M.) This is due to the number of tests dropping 16% week over week (from 10.5M to 8.8M,) while the positive test rate has increased less than one percent climbing from 14.1% to 14.2%.
2. Hospitalized patients have climbed 5.9% from 117.8k to 124.7k in the last week. This has also pushed the hospitalization rate of all cases from 8% last week to 10% this week.
3. ICU cases has climbed 3% from 22.2k to 22.8k in the last week. This has also impacted the percent of cases needing to go to the ICU from 1.5% to 1.8% in the past week.
4. Deaths over the past week are down 17.4% from 18.8k to 15.5k, but this number is showing some quite low deaths from the 25th through 12/28. Deaths reported yesterday and today appear to be trending a bit higher than previous, so do expect total deaths to reverse course.

For the state of GA:
1. Total cases week over week have declined 2.7% from 34.8k to 33.8k, and this is mainly attributed to a 9% reduction in the number of tests, while there has been a large increase in the positive test rate by 7% from 13.6% to 14.6% this week.
2. The number of people in the hospital in the state has increased 17% over the past week, climbing from 4,137 to 4,839, and numbers for yesterday were the highest one day admissions since tracking has occurred with 451 new admits.
3. Deaths are still climbing in the state week over week by 4.3%, rising from 303 to 316 this week, with 83 deaths reported alone yesterday. There is an expectation that the number of deaths should be higher today, before declining through early next week.

More to come later, and I hope you all have a Happy New Year!!

The results leading up to and for the first few days post Christmas have shown some improvement across the US and the state of GA. Here is some information:

For the US:
1 Total tests in the last 7 days are down 6.8%, falling from 10.5M last week to 9.8M this week. This is also the lowest level of testing since the week before Thanksgiving.
2. Positive tests have declined by 15.8% from 1.48M to 1.24M in the last week, and this is attributed to the decline in people taking tests as well as the positive test rate falling 9.7% (from 14.1% down to 12.7%)
3. For hospitalizations, they are still growing across the board. This includes current inpatients counts at 121k from 115k last week (or a 5.1% increase,) and ICU patients have increased by 3.2% from 21.9k to 22.6k.
4. Deaths over the past week have actually declined for the third week in a row dropping from 18.6k last week to 15.3k this week (a drop of 17.3%.) This is now the lowest level of deaths since late November, so let's hope that there were not a lot of deaths over the past long weekend that will cause a spike within the later part of this week.

For the state of GA, things are a little better than the national averages, including:
1. Total tests are up 2.3% in the last week, climbing from 243k last week to 249k this week, while the positive test rate has climbed .1% in the past week.
2. This has caused the overall 7 day case rate to climb 2.4% from 33.4k to 34.2k.
3. For hospitalizations, the number has skyrocketed 19.4% increase in the last week, climbing from 3,960 last week to 4,729 this week, which is the highest level of hospitalizations at anytime.
4. On a plus side, the number of deaths over the last 7 days has increased at a relatively low rate of .7%, with an increase from 295 to 297.

Overall numbers from the Christmas holiday and the New Year Eve holiday should start showing an increase in tests and cases next week, with hospitalizations climbing again in the third and fourth week of January.

Now, how about some information on states that are growing out of this world!!

As seen in the map below, The biggest issue with cases per 100k are still in the upper mid-west, and out toward the west, with a pocket a big growth taking place in RI and DE in New England.

When shifting to a positive test rate, there are some big outliers including ID, SD, NE, IA, AR, TN, MS and PA.

Also below are quite a few of the normal charts, including the trend line for the US starting to show a slight decline.

A bit of good news is appearing in some of the results. On a national level, it appears that the level of growth has slowed down quite a bit over the last week.

For the national view:
1. Testing is up 2.2%, climbing from 10.3M to 10.5M
2. Positive test rate has DECLINED by 2.7% falling from 14.5% to 14.1%
3. Overall new cases have DECLINE by .5% from 1.49M to to 1.47M new cases last to this week
4. Hospitalizations have slowed a bit in the past week, but the number still increased from 4.3% from 110k to 115. This has caused the inpatient rate of cases to increase from 7.4% to 7.8%.
5. ICUs have increased a modest 2.1% from 21.4k to 21.9k, with the percent of hospitalized patients transferring to the ICU has remained flat at 1.48%

The area of greatest concern is centered around an explosion of new cases in CA. The state has increased to 778 cases per 100k in the last week from 553 last week. That is an increase of almost 310k new cases. Other top growth state in rates per 100k are TN (958), OK (598), RI (581) and AZ (565).

Some states with limited growth per 100k include VT (108), OR (207), Maine (218), DC (241), and IA (248).

I'll update the state of GA tomorrow, with numbers that are not trending quite as well as the nation.

While the vaccine has arrived, let's hope that it can have an impact in the not too distant future, because the numbers just keep getting worse. So here are some numbers for the US:

- In the past week, the number of tests have declined 11%, while the number of cases have increased 2% (from 1.4M to 1.46M). When compared to the week of Thanksgiving (the new baseline,) the number of cases for a week have increased 31% from 1.1M to the current 1.45M.
- The current hospitalized patients has increased 7.8% in the past week from 104k to 113k, and the number has increased 17% from 96k the week of Thanksgiving to the 113k.
- The number of ICU patients has grown a little below the regular inpatient numbers (climbing 6.8% to 22k in the past week, and 16.4% since Thanksgiving.)
- The biggest issue revolves around the number of deaths. The number of deaths has increased 9.6% from 15,800 to 17,345 in the last week, and the number has increased 68.8% from Thanksgiving week with 10,274.

**The hopeful news is that the number of tests, and the resulting increases in new cases could be near a peak from the Thanksgiving bump. This means the peak increases in hospitalizations, ICUs should continue to climb over the next two weeks, with deaths continuing to climb through late January.**

The state of GA looks quite a bit different:
- The number of tests has increased 10.4% in the past week from 216k to 240k, while the increase is up 37% from 175k to 240k since Thanksgiving. This is combined with an increase in the positivity rate by 4.9% in the last week, and a 46% since Thanksgiving (from 9.1% to 13.3%)
- Hospitalized patients has increased 11.3% in the past week to the highest numbers yet at 3,352, and that is up 30% since Thanksgiving (from 2,574 to 3,352.)
- When we shift to overall death increases, the number has climbed from a total of 9,873 a week ago to 10,160 this week (up 2.9%), while the number is up 7.5% from 9,452 the week of Thanksgiving. The good news surrounding deaths is that in the past week, the number of deaths has declined from 358 to 287 (or a decline 19.8%. )

As we shift to the nationwide positivity rate map, the trend seems to be shifting from the upper mid-west down a little south, mainly toward OK,NE,MO, AR,TX, MS, AL, TN, KY and big increases in ID and PA.

When I shift to the map of Infection Rate per 100k people, the upper mid-west is still more than double the national average in some places. Some of the more poorly performing states include TN, RI, AZ, IN, NV, OH and DE. These states all have a case rate per 100k greater than 600, with the national average at 400.

More to come later, so have a good night!!