Thread by @beadsland

Another week, another ~70,000 added to #LongCovid dashboard. (Metric based on testing.)

Media reports of 30 million.

Extrapolate latest Census survey—self-reported subset of symptoms—to all ages: 47 million.

Not counted: new risks of morbidity and mortality.

#ThisIsOurPolio

Reported staffed beds continues decline, as hospitals surveyed figure gains a point.

National utilization holds last week's level, with no marked change in occupancy.

How many necessary procedures are being deferred as steady health worker attrition continues?

#ThisIsOurPolio

Pediatric staffing never recovered to pre-omicron levels.

This despite fact that more hospitals were reporting pediatric bed capacity Feb through July than had been in prior years.

Pediatric bed utilization is now reported at highest level since pandemic began.

#ThisIsOurPolio

Next week's version of above will be tweaked to improve clarity. Adapts machinery for general hospital capacity timeseries, only so much more happening here!

Also, wanting to dig into January data to get firmer grasp on seismic shift in landscape of pediatric care that followed.

Began work on hospital capacity by county; was struck by sudden shift in map.

Many usual counties for top 10 dropped off the list; total number of counties above and near capacity up significantly.

Investigating, discovered column have been relying on in HHS dataset inaccurate.

Was supposed to be working on expanding children's hospital choropleth—created few days ago—to include the 60% of pediatric beds that aren't in explicitly children's hospitals.

May still get to that, but first will have to revise dataseries parsing/docs to address bad HHS data.

Further investigation reveals HHS data issue is new.

Looking at hospital for Warren Co, NY, we see that column we rely on has been blanked. Most recent record does show a value inpatient beds, but it doesn't match adult inpatient beds figure next to it.

Compare from week prior.

Seeing same pattern for multiple hospitals. Blank fields where once had data—or else inpatient bed used counts substituted into those fields that tend to be below figure given for adult inpatient beds used in same record.

New numbers closer to beds staffed then actual beds used.

Only noticed because counties that have consistently been far overcapacity suddenly dropped out of top 10 nationally—even as number of hospitals at or near capacity jumped appreciably for first time in months.

Data shows they're still over capacity, but a column's been scrubbed.

Adult beds used still tracks vs data from prior weeks. Only column for beds used without reference to adult vs pediatric that appears to have been surgically rewritten.

As was already planning to do a full pediatrics-only map—am going to just do separate map for adult-only beds.

That few beds are counted as "covid" doesn't mean space is available if you get sick or injured.

Of 73 counties ≥ 100% capacity per HHS data, only ONE is CDC High "Level"; twelve at Medium.

With national utilization now at 77%: 258 counties ≥ 90%; 575 ≥ 80%.

#ThisIsOurPolio

Counties by hospital capacity—colored per CDC semiotics:

🟢Modoc, CA >150% (Low)
🟢San Jaun, NM >150% (L)
🟡Bartholomew, IN >150% (Medium)
🟢Smyth, VA—126% (L)
🟡Wise, VA—123% (M)

🟢Platte, MO—114% (L)
🟢Edgecombe, NC—112% (L)
🟢Sandoval, NM—110% (L)
🟢Boone, KY—107% (L)

Updated pediatric capacity map now shows all pediatric beds, not just children's hospitals.

Over 250 counties have pediatric care near or over capacity (≥90%). Of these, THREE are High "Level" per the CDC, four out of five only rate Low.

They're full, but Low.

#ThisIsOurPolio

Counties by pediatric capacity—colored per CDC semiotics:

🟢Coconino, AZ>150% (Low)
🟢Rutherford, TN >150% (L)
🟢Beltrami, MN >150% (L)
🟢Yavapai, AZ >150% (L)
🟢San Juan, UT>150% (L)

🟢Florence, SC—143% (L)
🟢Cobb, GA—143% (L)
🟢Fairfax, VA—130% (L)
🟡Wood, WV—125% (Medium)

U.S. share of global covid deaths down to 27.6%—from pandemic record 29.0%—of 28-day deaths; 4% of population.

G20 deaths hasn't been this high since June: 27.3%; 7% of population.

Near half of all G8 deaths are U.S. (46%). Only about a third of G8 population.

#ThisIsOurPolio

Given preliminary excess deaths estimates, we entered October with nearly one in seven excess deaths due to causes other than covid.

That's sudden & not-so-sudden deaths due to post-acute sequelae plus other—once preventable—deaths due to understaffed hospitals.

#ThisIsOurPolio

With Triton-child BA.2.5.6 new to CDC Nowcast, we've officially entered soup wave a week early.

If current trends hold, Cerebrus BQ.1.1 will be dominant strain by end of November, with Typhon BQ.1 far ahead of remaining strains.

Aeterna BA.4.6 now losing share.

#ThisIsOurPolio

Only bellwether NY/NJ & Mid-Atlantic regions are fully in the soup. All other regions are still majority undifferentiated BA.5.

Where Cerebrus BQ.1.1 most established:

NY/NJ—19.0%
Mid-Atlantic—16.6%
Mtn North—13.9%

Typhon BQ.1:

NY/NJ—23.5%
Middle South—17.5%

#ThisIsOurPolio

Follow search link for latest edition daily update thread on the mass disabling event that is rentier society's pandemic response in U.S.

Will be working on improving hospital capacity charts—national and county-level—this week.



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