There were apocalyptic predictions of doom when Georgia loosened its lockdown restrictions against the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 on 25 April. Here they are
From The Atlantic — “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice — The state is about to find out how many people need to lose their lives to shore up the economy.” — https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/
7 day moving average of new cases of COVID19 ending 25 April — 740
7 day moving average of new cases of COVID19 ending 13 May — 525 (the state allows 14 days for all the data to roll in, so the last date they regard as having secure numbers is the 7th of May and here the number is 539)
7 day moving averages of deaths from COVID19 ending 25 April — 35
7 day moving average of deaths from COVID19 ending 13 May — 24 (the state allows 14 days for all the data to roll in, so the last date they regard as having secure numbers is the 7th of May and here the number is 27).
Back on 25 May I wrote “People who assumed (on purely correlative evidence) that lockdowns prevented new cases, and that lifting them would cause a marked increase in new cases and deaths, are clearly wrong. It’s possible that cases will spike in the future proving them right, but pretty unlikely. It’s only fair to give the doomsayers a sporting chance and followup is planned in a month.”
So here’s the followup. The 7 day moving average of daily deaths had dropped to 17 as of 11 June. Remember Georgia waits 14 days as data filters in to regard the numbers as definitive. Here’s the link — https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
So the death rate from COVID-19 dropped in half 2 months after Georgia loosened some of the lockdown restrictions.
There are only two useful statistics in all of this. The moving average of the daily death rate and the number of COVID19 cases in the hospital. I no longer follow the number of new cases, because they include people with a positive antibody test (all of whom have recovered). We know that most cases are asymptomatic. It’s very hard to get the second number of people sick in the hospital with COVID19 (I’ve tried with no luck). COVID19 used to mean that you were sick — no longer, it now counts positive antibody tests, rendering the number relatively useless. By choosing who to test, numbers can be easily inflated — https://luysii.wordpress.com/2020/06/22/new-york-city-covid-19-cases-spiked-today-stock-market-futures-tank/
Daily death rates are great for cherry picking scare headlines — it’s worth looking at this article from Tampa — https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/florida-coronavirus-cases-hospitalizations-deaths/67-4bbd0c35-6742-4f51-a59a-ea1d101f54ea
It contains a great figure with the number of deaths each day from March onward on which is superimposed the moving average — the range is from 10 to 100. Even more impressive is the fall on weekends and the rise during the week.
Fortunately, every Friday Florida releases the weekly results for antibody testing, so we’ll be able to see how many of these new cases of COVID19 are people who have recovered from it.
Here’s another link — well worth looking at — with the number of new cases in Florida in one graph (with the marked increase in the past week) and the number of death from the disease just below. The deaths in the past week are the lowest they’ve been in a month — https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429
Chemiotics II 