Coronavirus in Massachusetts (Boston: homes, schools, university)

[western mass and love it]

Originally Posted by jtolpin

Numbers dont look good.

The numbers are great, 0.9% infection rate and deaths and hospitalizations are at there lowest point. Lets move on from the doom and gloom and get back to full on living.

[Urban Peasant]

Originally Posted by western mass and love it

The numbers are great, 0.9% infection rate and deaths and hospitalizations are at there lowest point. Lets move on from the doom and gloom and get back to full on living.

When we get our numbers below 100 and keep it that way for a month, then we will talk about returning to full on living. There are plenty of other countries throughout the world with far lower numbers than ours that aren't even back at full on living yet.

[Bridge781]

Yeah the cases are rising. That great if there are less deaths but more cases will end up leading to more deaths.

People think they can have parties apparently.

[rach5]

Isn't the percent positive is driven down by large scale testing by universities? MIT is testing everybody multiple times a week.

[porterhouse]

Originally Posted by Bridge781

Yeah the cases are rising. That great if there are less deaths but more cases will end up leading to more deaths.

That’s what we’ve been hearing since June. No amount of deaths are acceptable, but the baseless hysteria is tiresome.

[wolfgang239]

Originally Posted by rach5

Isn't the percent positive is driven down by large scale testing by universities? MIT is testing everybody multiple times a week.

And it would be driven down even more if we were able to test everyone in the state.

[redplum33]

Percent positive is a stat that can be manipulated.

The number of cases is high. There is nothing fantastic about the numbers.

[Space_League]

Originally Posted by redplum33

Percent positive is a stat that can be manipulated.

The number of cases is high. There is nothing fantastic about the numbers.

They seem pretty stable in MA:








https://www.worldometers.info/corona...massachusetts/


Looking deeper at the data from CDC:

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisiona...9bhg-hcku/data


On the plus side it looks like extremely few to no deaths in MA children so far and few deaths in people under 35.

looks like about 47% of deaths were in people over the age of 85 and around 75% were in people aged 75 or older and a whopping 90% were over the age of 65 per the above dataset.

The provisional numbers are somewhat lower than the numbers from worldometer, but I don't see a reason why the ratios wouldn't hold.

It seems we have among the highest death toll in the country because of massive failure in long term care facilities. In fact Massachusetts tops the list for the highest percentage of LTC facility residents to die in the Pandemic. So far over 12% of nursing home residents in the state have died from Covid-19




https://data.cms.gov/stories/s/bkwz-xpvg

[BostonMike7]

Originally Posted by Space_League

TSo far over 12% of nursing home residents in the state have died from Covid-19

12% of all residents total?

Originally Posted by wolfgang239

And it would be driven down even more if we were able to test everyone in the state.

That's what I was thinking as well. If you all the sudden had the capability to test everyone in the state weekly, that percent positive number would get driven down very low. In order for that number to be meaningful, the number of tests administered, and the criteria for who takes them needs to be constant. With Aug wrapping up, it's possible a large number of recent tests were administered to people looking to squeeze in vacations, or schools/businesses looking to test employees before return to work/school which would drive that number lower. If you look at page 6 of the daily COVID report, you'll see the number of tests being administered is higher now than what was being done in July. That can account for driving the positivity down to where it is at 1.0%

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

12% of all residents total?



That's what I was thinking as well. If you all the sudden had the capability to test everyone in the state weekly, that percent positive number would get driven down very low. In order for that number to be meaningful, the number of tests administered, and the criteria for who takes them needs to be constant. With Aug wrapping up, it's possible a large number of recent tests were administered to people looking to squeeze in vacations, or schools/businesses looking to test employees before return to work/school which would drive that number lower. If you look at page 6 of the daily COVID report, you'll see the number of tests being administered is higher now than what was being done in July. That can account for driving the positivity down to where it is at 1.0%

Percent positive isn't meant to indicate how prevalent COVID is in the community, only to indicate how prevalent testing is. The total number of active cases indicates how prevalent infection is in the community. Combining the two gives a good indication of how many uncontrolled cases are likely to be in the community.