Day 41: I Don’t Know What to Make of the DPH Numbers Today

• COVID-19 Report As of Saturday, April 25, 2020 GA DPH 7PM
• DPH Numbers At-a-Glance
  • Consecutive day #0 of decreasing growth (14 needed) ▲
  • Confirmed COVID-19 Cases: 23,216 (+1,069) ▲
  • Daily Growth Rate: 4.8% (+1.9%) ▲
  • Weekly Growth Rate: 3.8% (+0.1%) ▲
  • Hospitalized: 4,353 (+132) ▼
  • Deceased: 907 (+15) ▼
  • Morbidity Rate: 3.9% (-0.12%) ▼
• Estimated Numbers
  • IHME Prediction: 34 Deaths (off by +19)
  • My Prediction: 30 Deaths (off by +15)
  • Double the Number of cases every 21 days (was 34)
  • Contagious Ratio: 17 in every 1,000 Georgians (was 16)
• ▼= getting better; ▲= getting worse; ✓ = same

Once again I’m slacking and writing about Saturday, April 25, 2020 on Sunday, April 26, 2020. Well, I’m not getting paid, and this is not my job, so technically I can’t be “slack.” However, I am late to the analysis. (To be transparent, I’ve only glanced at the Sunday numbers before writing this, and I did not change my predictions.) That being said, I’m not believing these numbers on first blush. The number of deaths seems too low. Fifteen are reported. My prediction of total 922 was HIGH by 15 while IHME was HIGH by 19! Earlier, I felt that the IHME prediction was ridiculously low. Now, the actual number is deaths is half the already ridiculously low prediction? Something does not seem right. However, if true, then I am very happy to be wrong!

But death is the end of the COVID-19 process for a few unlucky people (currently 3.9% of those infected). Saturday brought 1,069 new positive cases which was almost double the number from the day before. Coincidentally, Friday was the first day of Phase II reopening of Georgia. If not a coincidence, then this might be the first of the Second Wave of infections. So are we at the beginning of the end, or the at the beginning of the Second Wave? As usual, we might have to wait until next week for the numbers to catch up.

Fig 1, below (as reborn because Excel killed the last two) shows the most recent data for infections with my prediction for tomorrow’s total. I changed how much data to show at once to give you a better idea about the rate of change (how steep the graph grows). When I showed the data from March 10, 2020, it made the graph look like a ski jump. The way it is shown in Fig 1, you see that the growth rate has slowed down. The daily jump in the infection number is shown better by Fig 2, which is more jittery because it shows the change in the average number. Fig 3, shows the deaths for the last month. At this scale, you can see that the number of deaths has been trending down since Tuesday, April 21, 2020.