Covid-19 Update: 22 November

I have been taking and have yet to take a lot of holiday time this year. So apologies for the sporadic posting. But we’re working this week, because travelling to see family this year is a bad idea.

So the last Covid-19 update I posted was about a month ago. A lot has happened in the last month, like an entire election. But you really should go back a month and look at the charts for the five states I cover. At the time I said things were

Bad and getting worse.

I added that

while we are seeing dramatic rises in new cases, we are not yet seeing the rises in deaths that accompanied similar rises in March and April

And so let’s take a look at where we are now. First with cases.

And now with those deaths.

I mean…

This has all been so obvious for so long. And yet, I had to run two errands yesterday—timed so that I’d be running them whilst most of Philadelphia watched their football team and they must have played poorly from all the people yelling “c’mon” out their windows—and whilst the streets were fairly empty, about half of the people I passed either had their masks down, were doing that idiotic cover-the-mouth-but-not-the-nose thing, or—and this is the kicker—flat out had no mask on at all.

I’ll repeat what I said a month ago, things are bad and getting worse. But, maybe unlike a month ago, people will start taking this seriously. Because a month ago I wrote about how new deaths were not yet at the levels of the spring.

Well take a look at Illinois. They got there in just four weeks.

Pennsylvania? Halfway there.

New Jersey? Starting to rise a little bit faster now.

Virginia? Well Virginia has one of the odder death patterns I’ve seen—partly by their repeated cycling through backlogged data—but it’s clearly on the upswing now.

Delaware? It’s hard to see because the numbers are so small, but it’s also on the rise.

So please, just wear a bloody mask.

Credit for the piece is mine.