Thread by @therealarod1984

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.