The big Q in MN’s #COVID19 stats this week is whether the encouraging drops we saw last week will continue.

Today’s stats are cautiously encouraging. Cases dropped, but some of that was driven by falling testing volume. Positivity rate ony inched down.
Tomorrow’s multi-day data dump will have a bigger swing on the data. Tuesday reports usually include twice as many total tests as Monday reports do.

Obviously we’d have loved to see a bigger drop here, but there’s nothing alarming here.
New #COVID19 hospital admissions continue to rise, especially for non-ICU beds.

By this time last year hospitalization data had already begun to fall steadily. (Our Fall 2020 wave peaked earlier than our possible peak now.)
While #COVID19 hospital *admissions* are up, *bed use* is much, much higher compared to the 2020 peak.
The observed decline in case counts is visible in all regions of Minnesota:
As of today’s report, MN has passed the round-number thresholds of 70% of the total population with at least one dose, and 25% of the population with a booster.
Rates of both boosters and first doses are trending down, however. (Second doses are up, reflecting the initial surge of 5-11-year-olds who immediately got their first doses a month ago.)
Another Monday means another lagged week of data on #COVID19 by vaccination status — and no real changes in relative prevalence. The unvaccinated were still (as of early Nov.) about 4x more likely to catch COVID, and 16x more likely to be hospitalized or die from it.

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More from @dhmontgomery

13 Dec
1/ This can be somewhat counterintuitive, so it's not surprising many people are confused.

First, numbers: For the period where we've got data (May-Nov.) MN has 1,868 COVID deaths, of which 718 were fully vaccinated & 1,150 not; most of these deaths were in the past few months.
2/ Over this period, the share of MN's population that's fully vaccinated has grown from about 40% up to about 60% (with, again, more of the deaths happening in these later period where vax rates were higher).
3/ But remember 96.5% of MN's #COVID19 deaths have been over 50, and nearly 85% were 65+. So when estimating deaths, we REALLY need to adjust for age.
Read 11 tweets
7 Dec
The good news in today’s #COVID19 report for MN: as I said yesterday, data issues had artificially inflated our positivity rate; today’s data sorted that out.

The bad news: we’re still (just) north of 10% and much higher than the 9.2% we were at last last week.
You can see this spike and fall as a near mirror-image of last year — off by one day, in fact. This isn’t so much seasonal patterns in Thanksgiving *infection* as seasonal patterns in Thanksgiving *reporting*.

The rest of this week will be key to figuring out where we’re headed.
That said, seasonal patterns in infections are playing a role here, too. Here’s our sample-date positivity chart (which lags by a week), also closely matching last year.
Read 13 tweets
6 Dec
Remember we’re still being impacted by Thanksgiving’s aftershocks on #COVID19 reporting. Last Monday, for example, had an abnormally low positivity due to the holiday, so today’s 7-day averages will spike. But last Tuesday had a really high positivity, so they’ll fall tomorrow.
So by report date, MN’s 7-day average positivity rate spiked to over 11% today, the highest all year.

This is to a significant degree artificial, and will fall tomorrow. But even setting aside reporting issues we’re clearly in an upturn right now.
Here, for example, is positivity rate by sample date. This has a lag of up to a week, but all indications are we’re heading upward, driven by post-Thanksgiving infections.

Note this is a near-mirror of a brief spike we had LAST year right after Thanksgiving.
Read 10 tweets
5 Dec
If you’re looking for a new show to binge this month, I can’t recommend @ExpanseOnPrime enough. It’s got politics, intrigue, some standout characters, and some of the most realistic sci-fi you’ll ever see. The sixth(!) season is dropping soon. Binge it and the other 5 on Amazon.
@ExpanseOnPrime This fan-made trailer, part of a (successful!) campaign to save The Expanse from cancellation a few years ago, is perhaps the best way to get a sense of the show:
@ExpanseOnPrime Some people find the first season a little slow going. Stick with it through at least the end of Episode 4 — that’s when it really takes off.
Read 5 tweets
2 Dec
Some minor upticks in Minnesota’s #COVID19 metrics today — 5,313 cases and 9.3% daily positivity, compared to 4,131 and 7.5% a week ago. Overall the trend the past two weeks is encouraging, so there’s no reason to be concerned over one bad day.
An uptick that sustains itself for a week or so isn’t even cause for panic — last year we saw fairly mild spikes in the metrics a week or two after Thanksgiving & Christmas, but they quickly subsided.
The Thanksgiving holiday is still making our data messy. For example, this chart of new cases by sample date shows a HUGE drop. That’s because this data has a one-week lag, so last Thursday just entered the data — and far fewer people got tested last Thursday than normal. 🤔
Read 7 tweets
1 Dec
Another good news day in Minnesota’s #COVID19 reports: raw cases and positivity rate both trended down today. Our 7-day average positivity rate is now down to 8.8%.

A LOT could change, but right now it looks like we might have peaked circa Nov. 15.
That said, remember all our data is still messy due to the holidays. Case in point: deaths, which weren’t reported yesterday due to holiday staffing issues.

That meant @mnhealth reported 100 deaths today — a huge number — but that represents multiple days of data. Trend is flat
@mnhealth Deaths are actually down slightly from our peak last week, but this dataset is messy enough it’s too early to call a peak yet.
Read 9 tweets

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