Apologies for the lack of posting, work is pretty busy as we wrap some projects up. But here’s a look at the latest Covid data for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Illinois. Normally we look at Virginia as well, but their site was down for maintenance and so there was no data to report.
When it comes to new cases, we have on the one hand places like New Jersey and Illinois, where new cases continue to rise. The rate is nowhere near as fast as it was in March and April, but the inclines are clearly there. Delaware has been up and down, but largely hovering around just shy of 100 new cases per day. Pennsylvania is a bit harder to tell because of some dramatic swings that have knocked the average around, but it does appear to be trending upward, though I’m not quite as confident in that as I am with New Jersey and Illinois.
New cases curve in PA, NJ, DE, and IL.
And then when we look at deaths, we generally have good news. Last week we were looking at Virginia and its working through a backlog of unreported deaths. That artificially inflated recent days, but also depressed deaths earlier in the pandemic. Beyond the old Dominion, however, deaths have remained fairly low. Only in Pennsylvania and Illinois do they hover around 20 deaths per day from the virus.
Apologies for the lack of posting yesterday, but I wasn’t feeling well. I had some other things planned for today, but then some other things happened this weekend and then I took ill. But it’s still important to look at what’s going on with the pandemic, especially in the United States where it’s been disastrously handled by the White House.
As we approach 200,000 dead Americans, we still look at what’s going on in the tristate region alongside Virginia and Illinois. Specifically we compare last week’s post to this week’s post. Note that normally we look at Sunday data on Monday morning and today we’ll be looking at Monday data on a Tuesday. Both Sunday and Monday are reports from their preceding days, and so we are still looking at weekend reporting of figures. So we can expect them to be lower than workweek data.
New cases curves for PA, NJ, DE, VA, & IL.
If we compare the above chart to last week’s, we can see that Pennsylvania has decidedly reversed course. Whereas things had been headed down in terms of averages, I was worried about the days of daily new cases exceeding the average. Sure enough the average has caught up to the new cases and we’re seeing a rise in the average to levels not really seen since the summer.
New Jersey remains on the path of slowly increasing its numbers of new cases. Delaware looks to be heading back down after a small bump. We might be seeing the beginning of a decline in cases in Virginia, down from its long-running plateau of nearly 1000 new cases per day. And finally in Illinois, it’s not quite clear where things are headed at present. But for the one-day spike that raised the average, it seemed as if new cases had been in decline, but the end of that otherwise decline might have been an inflection point as the average may be trending back upwards again.
Death curves in PA, NJ, DE, VA, & IL.
Then when we look at deaths, well we see no real significant change in four of the states. But last week, we were saying Virginia was at a good spot with its latest surge cycle coming to an end. Well now look at that spike and deaths that are higher now than they were in the spring. If you follow my daily posts on social media, you’ll know that there’s a reason for this.
For the last week Virginia has been working through a backlog of deaths that were not entered into its electronic database. And so these deaths happened over the last several months. Consequently the rise, if there even is one, is not nearly as high as shown. But it also means that the earlier peaks may have been far higher than reported at the time.
Apologies for the lack of posting last week. I’m on deadline for, well, today. Plus I had some technical difficulties on the server side of the blog. But it’s a Monday, so we’re back with Covid updates for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.
New cases curves for PA, NJ, DE, VA, & IL
The good news, such that it is during a global pandemic, is that in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Illinois, the seven-day average appears to be lower than this time last week or, especially in Delaware’s situation, about to break. For the First State, I’m looking at those days prior to the weekend below the average line that, in combination with the weekend, will likely begin to push that trend downward, especially if we keep seeing fewer and fewer cases this week.
Unfortunately, some states like Virginia and New Jersey appear to be, not surging, but experiencing low and slow growth. Low and slow, while great for barbecue, is less than ideal during a pandemic. Granted, it’s better than the rapid infections we saw in March, April, and May, but it still means the virus is spreading in those communities.
Death curves in PA, NJ, DE, VA, & IL.
When we look at deaths from Covid-19 in these five states, the news is better. The only real significant level of deaths was in Virginia, but we can see that the latest little surge, which was at peak last week, has now all but abated, almost to a level not seen since the spring.
The other states remain low with, at most, deaths average about 20 per day. Again, not good, but better than hundreds per day.
Yesterday was a holiday in the States, and so let’s begin this shortened week with a look at the Covid situation in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.
If we compare this morning’s charts of yesterday’s data to last Monday’s, we can see some concerning trends.
New case curves in PA, NJ, DE, VA, & IL.
In Pennsylvania, that includes a rising trend. Anecdotally, that might be tied to the outbreaks in and around universities. We see rising trends in Delaware and Virginia as well, though some of Delaware’s new numbers might be tied to some cases that failed to initially make into the state’s digital database. And so as the state begins to enter them now, it artificially inflates the new case numbers.
Illinois had an enormous spike of cases from a backlog that the state entered, over 5,000 new case in that one day. That’s going to mess with the average trend given the size of the anomaly. So we’ll need to wait until later this week to see where the trend really is.
Then in terms of deaths, the most worrying state was Virginia which last week was mid-peak. But that appears to maybe be trending back down. Though the data we have does include two day’s of weekend numbers and Tuesday’s numbers, instead of the usual “rebound” will be more of the usual weekend depressed numbers.
It’s another Friday. Which means another work week come and gone. Most of my days now consist of Covid-related work. A couple of months ago, Memorial Day began the surge in Covid-19 cases. Hopefully people take it more seriously now, and everyone masks up and stays distant so that Labour Day does not become a new big inflection point. Consequently, this piece from xkcd feels most appropriate.
For my American audience, since it is a holiday weekend, again, enjoy Labour Day. For my British audience, you already had your summer bank holiday. For everyone, have a good weekend.
After dealing with hurricane forecast plots last Monday, we’re back to the nature-made, man-intensified disaster of Covid-19 in the United States. So in the five states we review, where are we with the pandemic?
Compared to the charts from two weeks, looking at daily new cases, in some places we are in a better spot, and in others not much has changed. In fact Illinois is the only place worse off with its seven-day average higher than it was two weeks ago, but not by dramatically much.
New cases curve in PA, NJ, DE, VA, & IL.
In fact we see in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware that the average number of daily new cases is lower than it was two weeks ago. Virginia dipped lower, but has recently returned to approximately the same level and in that sense is in no different a place. Of course the key factor is how those trends all change over the coming week.
But what about in terms of deaths?
Deaths curve in PA, NJ, DE, VA, & IL.
Well here there is bad news in Virginia. Two weeks ago a spike in deaths there had largely subsided. Two weeks hence? We are in the middle of a third spike of deaths, reaching nearly 20 deaths per day.
Fortunately, the other four states remain largely the same, and that means few deaths per day. Indeed, for Pennsylvania and New Jersey that means deaths in the low double-digits or often in the single digits. Delaware has not reported a new death in four days. And Illinois, while up a little bit, is in the low single-digits, but generally just a few more deaths per day than Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Today’s piece comes from a BBC piece that visualises the most popular baby names in the UK along with the largest winners and losers in name popularity. The article leads with the doubling of babies with the name Dua, from a singer named Dua Lipa, and more than doubling those with the name Kylo, from a character in Star Wars. Of course, those are not the most popular names in the United Kingdom. For boys it’s presently Oliver and for girls, Olivia.
Naturally the piece has a bar chart for each sex and their ten most popular names. But later on in the piece we see two set of graphics that look at those names with the fastest rises or declines in popularity. I chose to screenshot the winners.
It makes use of essentially sparklines, a concept that features small line charts that really focus on direction instead of levels. Note the lack of axis labelling to inform the reader the line’s minimum and maximum. Instead the minimum and maximum are the absolute vertical range of the line.
What this chart attempts to do, however, is hint at those ranges through colour. By using a thicker weight, the line encodes the number of names in the colour. Compare Arthur, whose line ends in a dark bluish colour, to that of Arlo or Grayson, whose names also end in their peak, but in a light bluish colour. All three names have risen, but in terms of absolute levels, we see far more Arthurs than Graysons. Holy popularity, Batman.
When it comes to communicating the size of the names’ popularity, I am not entirely convinced about the idea’s efficacy. But, it lands more often than not. Can I compare Ada to Hallie? No, not really. But Ada vs. Theo is fairly clear.
Could the same effect be accomplished by a sorting order? Say the names were grouped by those who have numbers in 2019 that fall between 3,000 and 4,000, then another range of 1,000–2,000, and so on.
I also wonder if the colours in the bar charts could have been linked to those of the rising and falling names? Keep dark green for the boys’ names and purple for the girls’. It could have made a more solid thematic link between the graphics. As it is now, there seems no rhyme nor reason for the colour choices.
Finally the article has two tables that list the most popular names for each sex for each region. There’s nothing really to improve in the table’s design. The rules dividing rows and columns are fairly light so we don’t have to highlight that usual fault.
Overall, it’s a strong article with some nice visualisations.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
Yesterday, President Trump claimed that Covid-19 was “surging” in New Zealand, a country widely lauded as having successfully contained and suppressed their outbreak. That has allowed Wellington to reopen large swathes of their economy without incident.
Until this surge.
And by surge we mean something like 30 cases in 3 days. So, let’s compare that surge to the numbers of new cases in the United States.
Now, to be fair, New Zealand has a population of nearly 5 million, the United States has nearly 335 million. So a direct number-to-number comparison of the number of new cases per day isn’t fair.
So let’s look at the number of new cases per million people, which equalises the data for population.
So yeah, New Zealand is not “surging”. The data shows that even with the more limited testing per capita conducted in the United States, we are nowhere near the point of bending the curve anywhere close to zero.
So here are the charts from the last week of Covid data in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.
When we compare last week’s update to today’s, we can see that Pennsylvania did indeed bottom out and is back on the rise and the same can probably be said for Delaware. Although a fair amount of the one-day spikes in those numbers we see today are from an outbreak in a correctional system.
Whilst Virginia did go up, by week’s end, it had settled back down to a point not dissimilar to last week. So nothing really changed and time stood still in Virginia. The same can also be loosely said for New Jersey, where it was more about fluctuations than determined rises or falls.
In Illinois, however, we finally saw a plateauing of the new cases numbers and with the slightest of declines .
New cases curve in PA, NJ, DE, VA, and IL.
Then in deaths we have not much to say as they remain low in New Jersey and Delaware and stable and moderate in Illinois.
Virginia’s recent spike appears to have subsided, as it’s back to nearly 10 deaths per day from the virus.
But most concerning is Pennsylvania. Here, while the numbers are still relatively low, they are on a slow and gradual rise. At this point the seven-day average is beginning to rise above 20 deaths per day.
Weekend data means, usually, lower numbers than weekdays. And with the exception of Delaware that’s what we have today. Some drops, like Illinois, are more dramatic than others, like New Jersey. And so we look at the seven-day trend.
And that tells a slightly different story. On the one hand we have states like Virginia and Illinois that appear to be continuing upward. The rise in Illinois has been slow and steady, but the average is approaching nearly 2000 new cases per day. In Virgina, the rise was more abrupt and the question is whether this peak has crested in recent days or if come the middle of next week it will resume rising.
In New Jersey and Delaware we see two states with does declines after some sudden spurts of new cases. Jersey had risen to nearly 500 new cases less than two weeks ago, but that’s now back down to fewer than 350. And in Delaware, while today’s number is greater than yesterday’s, the trend is still downard after being at over 100 new cases per day two weeks ago.
New cases curves for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.
Then we have Pennsylvania. At one point doing it had done so well in controlling the outbreak to bend the curve to fewer than 500 new cases per day at one point. Then as the state began to reopen, cases began to rise again in the west and now the east. But over the last week that statewide average began to fall. But in the last two days that fall appears to have potentially bottomed out. So come the middle of next week, the question will be does the downward trend continue or has the state hit a new valley before another rise?
Finally, in terms of new deaths, with the exception of Virgina, we have yet to see any rise in deaths that might correlate with the recent rises in new cases. And so nothing new there. But it’s worth pointing out that New Jersey has now reached the high single digits in terms of daily deaths from Covid-19. That’s remarkable for a state that back in April saw nearly 300 people dying every single day.
New death curves for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.
