May 9 - COVID-19 in Westchester County, NY

The Governor of New York almost did a happy dance yesterday as he declared victory over the corona virus.  It is true that New York has been reducing cases, deaths, and hospitalizations for several weeks, but the real impact of the governor's actions on those results is debatable.  Where is the control group to show cause and effect?  If the control group is Sweden, the total impact of this actions was negligible or negative.

The 7-day averages above agree with the shapes of the epidemic from my data for Westchester County, Nassau County, and NYC.  Note that Governor Cuomo finally dropped the 3-day average used for much of the epidemic.  As I have stated earlier, a seven day average is needed to filter out the weekend noise.

The data from Bergamo, Italy (my Westchester sister-province for this epidemic) is holding steady at about 20-80 cases per day. They are testing at a lower density than Westchester so their numbers must be corrected.  I estimate that they are testing in Bergamo at four times the national average in Italy or 1000 tests per million people per day.  That is one half of the Westchester rate of 2000 tests per day. Correcting their case rate to that testing density gives a flow of 40-160 new cases per day to be comparable with Westchester.  The current rate in Westchester is 150-250, but still declining.

Westchester had only seven deaths yesterday, the fewest deaths since the outbreak began.

Headline:  "Governor shocked that Healthcare workers in Westchester have lower prevalence of disease than rest of population according antibody: 6.8% vs 13.8%  Same in NYC and Long Island." This is how the media can distort reality.  How many stories did you read about the devastating effects of the virus on first responders, healthcare professionals, and food supply workers? Very early I did an analysis of sick police officers whose plight the media had highlighted.  The prevalence of disease amoung police was the same as the general population or less.  They were more likely to get tested and get better healthcare than the rest of the population, and in the end, they fared better.

Who is Dying?   In case you have forgotten amidst all of the other hype, this virus in NOT a threat to most people. The data in New York continues to show that 80% of the deaths are in persons over 60 and 90% of deaths have underlying conditions.  As I have said before, 98% of the population will do fine.  It would be scary if we did not know who the vulnerable 2% are. BUT WE KNOW EXACTLY WHO THEY ARE.

Contact Tracing    Finally someone has the courage to say what I have been saying about the futility of contact tracing with this epidemic.  Scott Atlas of Stanford has made almost the same arguments I did on these pages on April 19!

Methods of Transmission  Erin Bromage gives some great case studies of clusters that suggest methods of transmission.  Hint: It is not riding a bike outside!