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Nsikan Akpan, PhD Profile picture
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21 Mar, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Another Sunday, another questionable take about NYC's COVID Data.

NYC DOH says some data from the past week will be lower than expected, due to delays in receiving data from New York State...
www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid… Image
One of those metrics in question: The number of tests

March 17 is the latest day in the current collection. Its number of PCR tests is 1,362.

Sounds low? It is.

On March 10, the last day in the city's vetted data archive, the number of PCR tests is ***73,302.*** ImageImage
Something tells me that the number of PCR COVID tests in New York City didn't actually drop from more than 73,000 to under 1,400 in 7 days. 🧐🧐🧐

Given that the test number is the denominator in positivity, the data lag would falsely make it seem that the positivity is high...
This data lag may also explain zip codes that are "reportedly" approaching 15%.

One of those zip codes in question: Great Kills, Staten Island.

Time to send in the National Guard? Not so fast... Image
Great Kills positivity went from 8.1% to 14.8% in two weeks, nearly doubling.

Look deeper, and its latest number of tests is half that of the first week of March.

March 1-7: 1,162 people tested

March 11-17: 573 people tested

How curious? ImageImage
Moral of the story: Don't judge an outbreak by just one metric, and for the love of sweet Pete, don't lead your hot takes with an incomplete dataset.

(Note: Testing delays are common because the data is being compiled from multiple sources). gothamist.com/news/nyc-covid…

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More from @MoNscience

Nsikan Akpan, PhD Profile picture
23 Mar
Vax Twitter is lit today.
Read 5 tweets
Nsikan Akpan, PhD Profile picture
16 Mar
@angie_rasmussen @zeynep @kakape @apoorva_nyc @JInterlandi @jbkrell @gregggonsalves @peterstaley @TAGTeam_Tweets @_HassanF @CarlosdelRio7 @MMKavanagh To echo others on this thread: Just here to remind that smallpox was eliminated in N. America and Europe more than a decade before the rest of the world...
@angie_rasmussen @zeynep @kakape @apoorva_nyc @JInterlandi @jbkrell @gregggonsalves @peterstaley @TAGTeam_Tweets @_HassanF @CarlosdelRio7 @MMKavanagh ...and outside of a handful of small outbreaks, those developed nations remained protected. (Our World In Data has a nice slider map). ourworldindata.org/smallpox#numbe…
@angie_rasmussen @zeynep @kakape @apoorva_nyc @JInterlandi @jbkrell @gregggonsalves @peterstaley @TAGTeam_Tweets @_HassanF @CarlosdelRio7 @MMKavanagh ...and given the COVID-19 vaccine procurement at the moment, history seems destined to repeat itself with curbing the coronavirus?
launchandscalefaster.org/COVID-19#Timel…
Read 4 tweets
Nsikan Akpan, PhD Profile picture
14 Mar
People are justifiably concerned about the NY variant, but the overall case/hospitalization trends in the city are actually looking pretty good.

Here’s a list of positive signs

1) NYC case and hospitalizations continue to decline gothamist.com/news/coronavir…
2) The NYC metro area’s infection rate ranks 64th among the 100 largest urban center in the country, behind Raleigh and ahead of Kokomo, Indiana.

covidactnow.org/share/28854/?r…
3) An infection rate above 1.00 means an outbreak is growing. Below 1.00 means it’s shrinking.

NYC counties are basically holding steady. covidactnow.org/us/metro/new-y…
Read 8 tweets
Nsikan Akpan, PhD Profile picture
8 Mar
BREAKING: CDC Issues First Set of Guidelines on How Fully Vaccinated People Can Visit Safely with Others cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…
Indoor visits between fully vaccinated people and unvaccinated people who do not wear masks or physically distance from one another are likely *low risk for the vaccinated people.*

Therefore, precautions taken should be determined by the characteristics of the unvaccinated...
"If the unvaccinated people are from a single household that does not have individuals at risk of severe COVID-19, they can visit with fully vaccinated people indoors, without anyone wearing masks"

🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌
cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…
Read 5 tweets
Nsikan Akpan, PhD Profile picture
25 Feb
Just going to say the quiet part out loud again...

Vaccine campaigns were already unrolling unequally, so Johnson & Johnson’s candidate and its lower efficacy raise some tricky ethical questions for the coming months of the rollout. gothamist.com/news/it-fair-g…
Ok now, before you smash that reply button...

Some people may see this story as a criticism of the J&J vaccine, but it's really about disparities in our health care system... gothamist.com/news/it-fair-g…
...On Wednesday, the FDA reported the one-dose candidate from Johnson & Johnson is 72 percent effective at preventing moderate to severe cases of COVID-19 in regions w/o the variants.

For the mRNA vaccines, this protection was upwards of 90 percent in clinical trials...
Read 14 tweets
Nsikan Akpan, PhD Profile picture
20 Feb
Ask An Epidemiologist: Do I Need To Double Mask? feat. @MonicaGandhi9

It’s a good idea in some situations such as indoors. But a cloth mask with a filter works just as well.

✍️: @clewisreports for @WNYC / @Gothamist

gothamist.com/news/ask-epide…
How effective is double masking in protecting people from COVID-19?

@MonicaGandhi9: I wrote an article with @linseymarr ...The best option is a disposable surgical mask plus a cloth mask on top. That combo really looked like it blocked as much as an N95 gothamist.com/news/ask-epide…
Are there any alternatives to double masking besides the N95?

@MonicaGandhi9: We also looked at another type of mask, which is a cloth mask with a pocket for a filter inside...

...layering one cloth mask on top of another does nothing. It just makes it harder to talk.
Read 8 tweets

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