Covid-19 Weekly Time Series Maps and Charts

Click on thumbnail to view larger image.
At the end of this post is a PDF you can download and view later.
Data is sourced mainly from JHU data.

It’s becoming more and more clear that Covid-19 spreads from either close, prolonged indoor contact, as with a family member or office worker, or in other closed spaces.

Big box stores like Home Depot, with 50-foot ceilings and open floor plans (just divided by shelves of products that are not walls) are more like being outdoors, where any exhaled infected aerosols are quickly dispersed to harmless levels.

This video is only 7 minutes, watch it all, particularly when they introduce ventilation to see how fast the micro droplets are dispersed. That comes at 5:40. (It’s all in English after the first subtitled minute.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBvFkQizTT4&fbclid=IwAR2QYgdtnJ_zyuQQqe0_xQ4v9DLwmCuMAlxdk1jdZ5CZrNh-TNnA5H2di54

I found the video in this excellent essay:

COVID-19 Superspreader Events in 28 Countries: Critical Patterns and Lessons

https://quillette.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-superspreader-events-in-28-countries-critical-patterns-and-lessons/

I also highly recommend this one. The author wrote it after studying the above essay on super spreader events.

The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them

https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

What I take away from the video and the 2 articles is that there is virtually no risk of being infected while outside unless you are in a really densely packed venue such as a crowded wedding or funeral for a good period of time with an infected carrier.

Inside, there is little risk in grocery stores, people are just not crowded together for a long period. I would worry about being infected by a beautician or barber who was an asymptomatic carrier. That gives you the time and proximity for a good chance to become infected. I’d only do it if both of us were wearing N-95 masks, not loose surgical masks with plenty of side leakage.

The biggest risk is in packed offices, like call centers, or in church with singing, etc. The Washington State choir practice super spreader event is very telling.

Or a nightclub, like the Austrian example from above, where an asymptomatic bartender infected a bunch of his customers. In a loud nightclub, you have to lean close to a bartender to be heard, and you are practically yelling at one another, expelling vastly more droplets than in normal conversation.

Another takeaway is that the risk of catching Covid-19 from touching a surface and then your face may be greatly overestimated. In all of the super spreader events, an infected carrier was in a tight, closed place breathing on his family, friends or coworkers. In the case of the Korean call center, microdroplets infected 90% of the people on his side of the call center floor, and none on the other.

The above 2 articles were very eye opening. I hope folks will watch the video and read them.

Very helpful, but it's important to remember that a "new case" in most jurisdictions means "a positive PCR in someone never tested before", and as testing expands, especially the way it's being done, not all positive PCRs are "cases" - some are pre-symptomatic, some are not and never will be symptomatic, and some have seroconverted and are no longer contagious.

So, the decline in New York, while it's real, is exaggerated because they have done millions of tests and are running out of susceptibles, whereas New Hampshire has greatly expanded testing in the past week and therefore are discovering "cases" that may have existed for some time.

PCR is not a test of cure - not for this disease, nor for any other. It's GREAT for diagnosis, but not very useful after that.

“This will be studied for a long time to come.”

You’ve got that right.

“Virus Survivors Could Suffer Severe Health Effects for Years”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/covid-19-s-health-effects-can-last-long-after-virus-is-gone

[My comment: this does not mean I don’t want to reopen the economy, I do. I just don’t want folks to be misled into thinking that catching Covid is no big deal. It is.]

More than one million people around the world have been deemed recovered from the coronavirus, but beating the initial sickness may be just the first of many battles for those who have survived.

Some recovered patients report breathlessness, fatigue and body pain months after first becoming infected. Small-scale studies conducted in Hong Kong and Wuhan, China show that survivors grapple with poorer functioning in their lungs, heart and liver. And that may be the tip of the iceberg.

The coronavirus is now known to attack many parts of the body beyond the respiratory system, causing damage from the eyeballs to the toes, the gut to the kidneys. Patients’ immune systems can go into overdrive to fight off the infection, compounding the damage done.

While researchers are only starting to track the long-term health of survivors, past epidemics caused by similar viruses show that the aftermath can last more than a decade. According to one study, survivors of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, suffered lung infections, higher cholesterol levels and were falling sick more frequently than others for as long as 12 years after the epidemic coursed through Asia, killing almost 800 people.

SARS infected 8,000 people. With more than 4 million — and more every day — infected by the coronavirus, the long-term damage to health could strain social safety nets and health-care infrastructures for years to come as well as have implications for economies and companies.

The prospect led Nicholas Hart, the British physician who treated Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to call the virus “this generation’s polio” — a disease that could leave many marked by its scars and reshape global health care.

“What these chronic issues ultimately look like – and how many patients ultimately experience them – will have huge implications for patients, the doctors who treat them, and the health systems around them,” said Kimberly Powers, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is developing models on the virus’s spread to inform public-health efforts.

[rest at link]
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/covid-19-s-health-effects-can-last-long-after-virus-is-gone

Being familiar with Wisconsin, that chart is very misleading. It actually reflects the increase in testing capacity. Per the state’s website:
https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/covid-19/data.htm. Chart at bottom right of that page.

4/13 - 3,898 lab tests available
4/14 - 6,753 lab tests available
4/21 - 7,898 lab tests available
4/22 - 10,837 lab tests available
5/2 - 11,347 lab tests available
5/5 - 13,797 lab tests available

I bet if there was some way to correlate the data, that curve that started dropping on 4/5 reflects an actual drop off of infections, but was masked by the increase in testing. Look at the drop continuing after the last major increase in testing on 5/5. They haven’t stopped testing at the higher rate (5/14 was 13,382 tests). It’s that the masking effect of the testing increase went away.

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