Texas C19 Fatality reporting RE: Delta Variant.
1/n
This will be a thread, no way to put it in 1 tweet. Fatalities are reported by Date of Death. Death Certificates arrive to the State over time. This arrival can be charted, below is charting from Aug 20.
1/n Stay with me
Every day, the state reports the number of fatalities, but each day's report is comprised of anywhere between 1 & 60 days worth of fatalities. Each Death Cert takes a different amount of time to process.
Again from August, the report for 8/23. This goes on every single day.
2/n
Going back to the Aug 20 arrival charts, I charted every day's report. Basically if a day is X number of days in the past, Y% of the deaths have come in for it.
Today minus 14 days - 57% of the fatalities have been reported for that date.
- 21 Days - 79%
- 28 Days - 90%
3/n
So bring that to the fatality reporting for the Delta Variant. Here is the fatality reporting for yesterday, overlaid with hospitalizations. They've always tracked closely. But look at the last 3-4 weeks, its diverging! Well, no. Its not. At least not yet.
4/n
I can use my arrival chart from August to project what days 7-28 will look like. Side by side, here is the chart in 4/n zoomed in for the past few weeks, next to me projecting what it likely will actually end up being using the arrival percentages
5/n
All to say that based on a limited sample of Aug 2020, I project we will start seeing a slight increase in fatalities following the hospitalization curve. This is not necessarily a function of lethality of Delta. Its more a function of processing of death certificates.
6/n
If the processing has gotten more efficient, then perhaps we don't see this projected increase.
But in summary: We haven't had a day above 25 fatalities since June 2. Lowest since this all started. Its likely going to climb some from here.
Facts and Data over fear.
7/end
8/PS
I'm recording my projections so I'll be able to see over time how good they were. I've been doing this long enough, I'll end up being close.
I do see in the charting that fatalities are clearly lower in relation to hospitalizations than they were in 2020.
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