📣⚠️ NEW: As I've been expecting for over a month and as I hinted at last week, the Red/Blue COVID death rate divide, which had been significantly reduced during the #Omicron wave, has started moving back up again: acasignups.net/22/02/21/weekl…
There was one point in late September when the daily COVID death rate in the reddest decile of the U.S. was running nearly NINE TIMES HIGHER than in the bluest decile.
The gap between the extremes shrank down to almost nothing by late January...but is moving back up again now.
No idea how long this upswing will last & I doubt it will ever reach the extremes of the Delta wave...but the reason is pretty clear: Omicron, like prior variants, hit the most densely populated urban (blue) areas hard first, but is now spreading out into the rural (red) areas.
Well, for starters, this is comparing the entire state of Florida (including the vast rural counties) against the CITY of New York (one of the most densely-populated areas of the country).
At a MINIMUM you’d have to compare the STATE of NY (roughly 20M) vs the STATE of Florida. Also, I don’t think he wants me to compare the states from last September, for instance.
Here's NYC *plus* the rest of NY STATE (they're listed separately).
Jan 2021: 6,293 deaths
Jan 2022: 5,506 deaths
= 12.5% *fewer* deaths statewide in NY in Jan 2022 vs. Jan 2021.
A smaller drop than FL's 33.5% drop, sure...but a hell of a lot different from a 32% *increase*.
Been feeling kind of crappy the past few days so I decided to go ahead and use one of the 4 at-home COVID tests we received via USPS. My wife, kid & I are all vaxxed/boosted but you never know these days...
Will have the results in another 8 minutes or so.
Re. the test itself, for those who haven't used an at-home one yet: It's not too bad/complicated, but the nasal swab part is much worse than a PCR test--instead of 1 nostril for 5 seconds, you have to swab *both* nostrils for *15* seconds each.
Much sneezing resulted.
Annnnd…it’s negative.
Which means either a) I don’t have COVID, b) I did something wrong, or c) it’s a false negative.
It's been another 3 months, so I figured it's a good time to again break out COVID county-level, 2-dose, total population vaccination rates for all 50 states.
Again, I use CDC data for most states, w/state health dept. data for a few. 1/
ALABAMA: Fairly weak partisan correlation, mainly because the vaccination rate sucks pretty much EVERYWHERE. It does form an odd snake shape, though.
The graph on the right (w/out background graphics/etc) includes children 5-11 only.
ALASKA: AK has always been all over the place on COVID vaccination rates. Bristol Bay has supposedly vaxxed *over* 100% of its population which is impossible; this is caused by a variety of factors including error margin etc. I've set a max cap of 98% for any county's vaxx rate.
@RachelBitecofer Well, I haven't looked at 5-11 specifically, but it's pretty clear here. Notice how *both* the R^2 (correlation) *and* slope stopped climbing/leveled off around September, stayed flat for 2 months, and then started climbing again right after Thanksgiving?