maps – Page 11 – Coffee Spoons

Covid-19 Data from Monday

Monday’s Covid-19 data for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois provided a glimmer of good news, most notably in Pennsylvania. That, however, occurred on the same day as a protest in Harrisburg that could set the state back days if not weeks. More on that below.

Pennsylvania saw fewer than 1000 new cases for the first time since 1 April. The curve here may be doing more than flattening, but it might actually be falling. That is to say the infection rate is decreasing rather than stabilising and holding steady, as it appears to be doing in New Jersey. That said, new cases are appearing sporadically in the rural and less dense areas of the state. Problematically, protestors arrived in Harrisburg to let it be known they are unhappy with the quarantine. Because the rest of us are.

The problem is that it appears a significant percentage of those infected with the virus are asymptomatic carrier, i.e. they are sick, but do not show any symptoms like fever, coughing, difficulty breathing. Critically, they may not appear sick, but they can spread the sickness. And so a gathering of several hundred people in close quarters? Not ideal.

Compare that to a Christian cultish church in Daegu, South Korea. There, an infected parishioner did not heed government calls to isolate and instead attended a church service. The average infected person spreads this virus to two or three people. This congregant? They infected 43 people who then went on to infect other people.

It is quite possible that someone in that Harrisburg protest was an asymptomatic carrier. And given the lack of social distancing, the lack of masks, and the general reckless behaviour, it is quite possible that the rally could be a super-spreading event. But we won’t know for 5–10 days, the apparent incubation period of the virus. Hopefully we dodge the proverbial bullet. But it is quite easy to see how these kinds of protests could lead to surges in infections. And those surges would then force the government to extend its quarantine by weeks thereby defeating the entire point of the protestors.

We get it. Quarantine sucks. But we all have to suck it up.

Moving on to New Jersey, where we see continuing evidence of the plateauing of cases. The bulk of the cases remain in the north in the New York suburban counties with the fewest numbers in the counties in South Jersey. However, averages of nearly 3500 new cases daily remains quite high and the death toll of 4377 is likely to continue to climb higher, even if Monday’s 175 new deaths was lower than most days in recent weeks.

Delaware is back to reporting its figures. And in that release, we had Sussex County in the south climb above 1000 total cases. The levels or curves chart at the end will also show how the state might be flattening and stabilising its infection rate, but we will need several days of uninterrupted reporting to make that determination.

Virginia might be worrying. Or it might not be. Cases continue to increase in the big metropolitan counties like Fairfax and Henrico. But, there are still several counties out in the west that remain unaffected. And the curves chart at the end shows how there has not yet been any sort of even a near-exponential growth curve. Instead we just see a steady, slow increase in the number of cases. That in its own way makes it more difficult to see when the curve flattens, because it was already a relatively flat curve.

Illinois continues to be the tale of two states: Chicago vs. everywhere else. The combined Chicago and Cook County have over 20,000 total cases and the surrounding counties add a few thousand more, which gets you over 2/3 of the state’s 31,000 cases. That said, new cases and new fatalities are beginning to pop up in downstate counties.

Lastly a look at the curves. As I noted above when talking about Pennsylvania, you can clearly see the downward slope of the state’s new cases curve. Compare that to the plateau-like shape of New Jersey. Delaware and Illinois might be approaching a New Jersey-like curves. But I would want to see more data and in Delaware less volatility. But like I said, Virginia is a tricky one to read.

Credit for the pieces is mine.

Sunday’s Covid-19 Data

Here is a look at the data from Sunday’s releases on the COVID-19 outbreak in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and Illinois. I’ve omitted Delaware because they paused reporting on Sunday to move to a noontime release instead of their previous end-of-day.

I’m not exactly certain what that means for the data on Delaware and reporting time series. But, my guess is that will be more like a hole in the time series. I need to spend some time looking at that. But, anyways, on to the states for which we did have data on Sunday.

Pennsylvania continues to see growth in cases, but as we’ll get to with the levels, that appears to at least be stabilising. But in the spread of the outbreak, we are beginning to see the T of the state, that more rural and less densely populated area, beginning to fill in with cases. These are of course the areas of concern, the areas with shuttered rural hospitals, lack of comparatively developed infrastructure, where the impacts could be proportionately more severe than in the bigger cities. In terms of deaths, they have now spread almost across the state from east to west. I am still waiting until two adjacent counties connect before I make that final pronouncement.

For New Jersey, I have removed the orange outlines around each county. The initial idea was to show where deaths had occurred. But now that they have been reported in every county, they don’t seem to be as helpful as the small number I provide in the graphic. Regardless, 4200 deaths is a lot. But the approximately 200 new deaths is the lowest number reported in several days.

Virginia is a weird state. When we see the levels chart below, you will see how its uptick has been far more gradual, and to this point it does not yet appear to have peaked or begun to stabilise. Most of the reported cases continue to be in and around the state’s big cities, notably the DC metro area, but also Richmond.

Illinois has now seen cases from north at the Wisconsin border all the way south to Cairo. Most cases remain, however, concentrated in the Chicago metropolitan area, with lesser scale outbreaks occurring in the Quad Cities area and the suburban counties of Illinois this side of the Mississippi. Deaths continue to rise, and while most area again in the Chicago area, they are appearing increasingly at low levels in downstate counties.

But what about those curves? Excepting Delaware, which hasn’t reported new data, we can see that some states like Virginia continue to see increasing rates of infection. Others like New Jersey and Pennsylvania clearly have flattened and have entered a new phase. In New Jersey’s case it appears to be more of a stabilised plateau. In Pennsylvania, there was some evidence it was entering a declining rate phase, but that may now have begun to become more of a steady rate of infection like in New Jersey. Illinois is tough to read because of the variability of its data. It might be more of a pause in the rate of increase, or it may have begun to stabilise. We need more data.

Credit for the pieces is mine.

Sunday Covid-19 Data

Another day, more cases of coronavirus and Covid-19. So let’s take a look at Sunday’s data as there were some interesting things going on.

First, let’s dispense with Virginia. The state is enhancing its reporting structure, and so they admit the data is likely an underestimate of the present situation in Virginia. So here’s Virginia, nothing really changed.

Moving on, we have Pennsylvania. Here we are beginning to truly see the disparity between the cities in the southeast and southwest, namely Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the T that describes what sometimes is used to describe Pennsyltucky. (Though it also includes cities like Harrisburg, the state capital.) The point is that the T of Pennsylvania has yet to suffer greatly from the outbreak. Of course, it’s also the part of the state least equipped to deal with a pandemic.

New Jersey is just bad. One can make the argument that South Jersey is hanging on. (Though I will touch on that later with an idea for today’s afterwork work.) Bergen County in the northeast is likely to surpass 10,000 cases on its own today. And that will put it above most states.

Delaware is tough because it sits as a small state next to several much larger ones. But, the numbers seem to indicate the outbreak is still worsening. Though in terms of geographic spread, there’s little to say other than that New Castle County, home to Wilmington, in the north is the heart of the state’s outbreak.

Illinois is a fascinating state, because of how dissimilar it is compared to Pennsylvania, a state which has a similar number of people.

The map shows that geographic spread still has a little way to go before reaching every county in the state. But the outbreak has been there longer than in Pennsylvania. And most of the darker purples are concentrated in the northeast, in Chicago and its collar counties. Compare that to Pennsylvania above where you will see dark purple scattered across the cities of its eastern third, e.g. Allentown and Scranton, and in the western parts near Pittsburgh. This too could be worth exploring in depth in the future.

Lastly I want to get to the cases curves charts. Here we look at the daily new cases in each state.

The curves, flattening or otherwise, of the five states.

And unfortunately Sunday’s numbers will impact the Virginia curve, but it overall looks as if the state is worsening. I would argue that Illinois, which appears to be bending towards a steadying condition is likely in a weird weekly pattern where it appears to stabilise on weekends and then resumes reported infections come Monday. Pennsylvania might well be flattening its curve. I would want to see a few more days’ worth of data before stating that more definitively. Let’s give it to Wednesday or Thursday.

And then in New Jersey we have a fascinating trend. The curve of increasing number of cases has clearly broken. But it also is not shrinking. Instead, it seems to be more of a plateau. And in that case, the outbreak in New Jersey is not getting worse, but it’s also not getting any better. At least not numerically. However, the goal of flattening the curve is to create a slower, more steady increase in case numbers to help hospitals cope with surge volumes. So good news?

Credit for the pieces is mine.

Wednesday’s Corona Update

As I said yesterday, since people are finding these updates helpful on the social media, I am going to repost the previous evening’s graphics I make on the Coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak here on Coffeespoons as well. So while today is Thursday, these are the numbers states provided yesterday, so it’s more of a Wednesday update.

But here I can start with the flatter curves graphic. The New Jersey numbers in particular look good—I mean they’re still bad. Of course we are just a few big breaches of quarantine and lapses in social distancing from reversing that progress.

State-wise, Pennsylvania continues to worsen. However, a close look at the slope of the line in the previous chart indicates that the steepness of the growth may be lessening. Deaths passed 300 and cases are now firmly entrenched on both sides of the state with the rural, less densely populated areas in the Ridge and Valley portion of the state seemingly hit not as hard.

Despite the potential flattening, New Jersey is just in a rough spot. The final bastions of low case numbers in South Jersey are slowly filling up as Cape May County passed the 100-case threshold.

Delaware continues to accelerate and is now past 1000 cases.

Virginia continues to see cases spreading in the eastern, more populous portions of the state. And at 75 deaths, it’s nearing the 100-death threshold.

Illinois is seeing deaths occur away from Chicago, in the St. Louis suburban counties and in and around Springfield and Champaign and Bloomington areas.

Credit for the piece goes to me.

Tuesday’s Data on Covid-19

Here are the Tuesday figures for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. At the end is an updated version of the flattening curves chart as well. Given the value of these graphics that people have been texting, emailing, and DMing me on social media, I might consider making these a regular staple here on my blog as well. I would probably slowly write about other graphics covering the outbreak as well.

Any feedback is welcome on how to make the graphics more useful to you, the public.

Pennsylvania has finally reached the point where the virus has infected at least one person in every county. Now, if we shift our attention a wee bit to the deaths, we can see those are still largely confined to the eastern third of the state.

New Jersey continues to suffer greatly. But a sharp increase in new cases could be a blip, or it could mean the curve isn’t flattening. We need more data to see a longer trend. Regardless, over 3000 more people were reported infected and over 200 more died.

Delaware worsened significantly. As a small state, it has a lower captive population. But it is rapidly approaching 1000 cases. In fact, I would not be surprised if that is the headline from Wednesday.

Virginia also saw a significant uptick in cases. And most counties and independent cities in eastern Virginia now report cases. But the rural, mountainous counties in the west and southwest are not uniformly infected. At least not yet.

Illinois saw some geographic spread, but again, compared to a state like Pennsylvania, the worst in Illinois is disproportionately concentrated in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Lastly, the curves are not flattening in all the states but maybe New Jersey. But as I noted above, the higher daily cases there might be a blip.

Credit for the pieces goes to me.

Where’s My Corona? Another Round, Please

This past weekend I continued looking at the spread of COVID-19 across the United States. But in addition to my usual maps of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois, I also looked at the number of cases across the United States adjusted for population. I then looked at the five aforementioned states in terms of new cases to see if the curve is flattening. Finally, I looked at the number of hospital beds per 1000 people vs the number of cases per 1000 people.

The latter in particular I wanted to be an examination of hospitalisation rates vs ICU beds, which are a small fraction of total hospital beds. But as I could not find that data, I made do with overall cases and overall beds.

So first let’s look at the cases across the U.S. What you can see is that whilst New York and New Jersey do have some of the worst of the impact, Washington is still not great and Louisiana and Michigan are also suffering.

And then when we look at the states by their cases per 1000 people and their hospital beds per 1000 people, we see that the states often claimed to be overwhelmed, New York, New Jersey, and Washington are all well over the blue line, which indicates an equal number of beds and cases per 1000 people, or near it. Because it is important to remember that not all beds are the type needed for COVID-19 victims, who often require the more fully kitted out ICU beds. Additionally, not all cases are severe enough to warrant hospitalisation.

Cases per 1k people vs hospital beds per 1k people

Then from the broader national view, we can look at the states of interest. Here, those of you who have been following my social media posts, you can see fewer dark purples in these maps. That’s because I have adopted a new palette that has sacrificed granularity at the lower end of the scale and added it at the top, a particular need in New Jersey and the Philadelphia and Chicago metro areas. And finally we look at the daily new cases to see if that curve is flattening.

Pennsylvania now has almost every county infected. But unlike Illinois, which has a similar infection rate but more unaffected counties, Pennsylvania has fewer cases in its big city, Philadelphia, and has more cases in the smaller cities and towns.

New Jersey is just a disaster. Deaths are now reported in every county—so I can probably remove those orange outlines. The only potential good news is that new cases for the second day in a row were fewer than the day before. It could be a blip. But it could also be a signal that the peak of infection has or is nearing. That said, hospitalisations and deaths are lagging indicators and could take two weeks to follow the positive test results. So in the best case scenario that this is a peak, New Jersey is far from out of the woods.

Delaware is the smallest state I look at—and one of the smallest in the union overall—but its cases are worryingly increasing rapidly, although like every state I examine in detail it had fewer new cases Sunday than Saturday.

Virginia is in a better spot overall than the other four states. You can see that in the national map above. And most of Virginia’s cases are concentrated in the DC and Richmond areas as well as the cities along the peninsulas jutting into the Chesapeake.

Illinois is, as noted above, similar to Pennsylvania in terms of infections. In terms of deaths, however, it is doubling Pennsylvania’s numbers. And most of its cases are located in and around Chicago. Big chunks of downstate Illinois are unaffected or lightly affected compared to the Commonwealth.

Finally, as I noted in New Jersey, could these lower numbers Sunday than Saturday be meaningful? Possibly. But in all five states? Highly unlikely. Regardless, we can look at the number of daily new cases and see if that curve of infection is flattening. We should wait several days before beginning to make that assessment. But one can hope.

All of this is to say that things are bad and likely will continue to get worse. But I will keep looking at the data daily and presenting it to the public to keep them informed.

Credit for this piece is mine.

Another Friday, Another Corona with Lime Update

Today is yet another Friday in the pandemic. And so I wanted to just upload a few of the graphics I have been making for family, friends, and coworkers and posting on the Instagram and the Facebook. I did this two weeks ago as well, and if you compare those maps to these, you will see quite a stark difference. But on to today’s maps.

As a brief reminder, I am specifically looking at Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware—the tri-state region for my non-Philly followers—as well as Virginia and Illinois by the request of friends and former colleagues who live in those states. And then at the end I’ve been putting the tri-state region together to provide a fuller regional context.

Lastly, for today only, the Bureau of Labour Statistics published its jobs report about the number of job losses in March across the US. And…it wasn’t pretty.

Plus, the added bonus of the Bureau of Labour Statistics’ monthly jobs report. And spoiler, things aren’t so great out there.

Conditions in the national job market. Not great!

Credit for the work is mine.

Modelling the Impact of Not Sheltering in Place or Staying at Home

The administration botched the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only within the last two weeks have states acted to begin enacting dramatic policies aimed at slowing the spread of the virus through their communities. But what policies the federal government has enacted are now threatened by an administration that prioritises the economy and market over the lives of the citizens it leads. The White House is discussing loosening all the policies of social distancing that health officials and scientists say are necessary to slow the spread of the virus.

This website from CovidActNow.org uses a model to predict the impact state by state of various policies on hospital overcrowding and ultimately deaths. The site opens with a map of the United States showing, broadly, what kind of response each state has followed (understanding things change rapidly these days).

The state of reactions in the United States

That also serves as the navigation for a deep dive into those models for that state. Here I have selected my home state of Pennsylvania. It borders New Jersey and New York, two states that revolve, at least in part, around New York City, rapidly becoming the epicentre of the US outbreak, supplanting Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. What would the state face if we allowed things to keep going blithely on? What would happen if we merely socially distance for three months? What if we shelter in place for three months? (Emphasis added by me to show this is a long-term problem.)

Turns out that things don’t work out that well if we don’t stay at home, stop travelling, stop socialising. A table below the line charts shows the user how bad things go for the state in a table.

As you can see, for Pennsylvania, if we were to continue going on like normal, that would result in the deaths of almost the size of the entire city of Pittsburgh. Imagine if the city of Pittsburgh were suddenly wiped off the state map. That’s the level we are talking about.

Just three months of just social distancing? Well now you’re talking about wiping out just the cities of Allentown and Scranton.

Sheltering in place for three months, statewide? Well, thankfully Pennsylvania has lots of towns around the size of 5000 to choose from. Imagine no more Paoli, or Tyrone. Or maybe a Collegeville or Kutztown. An Oxford or a Media. Pick one of those and wipe it from the map.

Fundamentally the choice comes down to, do you want to restart your economy or do you want to save lives? Saving lives will undoubtedly mean unemployment, shattered 401k plans, bankruptcies, mental health problems, and cities, towns, and industries devastated without a tax base to provide for the necessary services. But, saving those jobs and dollars will means tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths.

I don’t envy the state executive branches making these decisions.

Pennsylvania has chosen a middle road, if you will. It enacted a stay-at-home policy for seven counties: Allegheny (Pittsburgh); Philadelphia and its suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery; and Monroe County. The rest of the state, primarily where the virus has yet to make any real significant appearance or appears to be spreading in the community, is not under the strictest of measures. This site’s model doesn’t account for a partial, statewide stay-at-home, but Pennsylvania’s choice is clearly a far superior one for people who prioritise lives over dollars.

Finally, to the people I have seen from my apartment gathering in parks, partying in outdoor spaces, that I can hear throwing house parties, please stop. If not for you, for the rest of us.

Credit for the piece goes to CovidActNow.org.

Thanksgiving Side Dishes

American Thanksgiving meals often feature elaborate spreads of side dishes. And everyone has a favourite. A common theme around the holiday is for media outlets to conduct surveys to see which ones are most popular where. In today’s piece we have one such survey from pollster YouGov. In particular, I wanted to focus on a series of small multiples maps they used to illustrate the preferences.

Big splashes of colour do not necessarily make for a great map

I used to see this approach taken more often and by this I hope I do not see a foreshadow of its comeback. Here we have US states aggregated into distinct regions, e.g. the Northeast. One could get into an argument about how one defines what region. The Midwest is one often contested such region—I have one post on it dating back to at least 2014.

Instead, however, I want to focus on the distinction between states and regions. This small multiples graphic is a set of choropleth maps that use side dish preferences to colour the map. Simple enough. However, the white lines delineating states imply different fields to be coloured within the graphic. Consequently, it appears that each state within the region has the same preference at the same percentage.

The underlying data behind the maps, at least that which was released, indicates the data is not at the state level but instead at the regional level. In other words, there are no differences to be seen between, say, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Consequently, a more appropriate map choice would have been one that omitted the state boundaries in favour of the larger outlines of the regions.

More radically, a set of bar charts would have done a better job. Consider that with the exception of fruit salad, in every map, only one region is different than the others. A bar chart would have shown the nuance separating the three regions that in almost all of these maps is lost when they all appear as one colour.

I appreciate what the designers were attempting to do, but here I would ask for seconds, as in chances.

Credit for the piece goes to the YouGov graphics team.

Food Flows Connect Counties

For my American audience, this week is Thanksgiving. That day when we give thanks for Native Americans giving European settlers their land for small pox ridden blankets. And trinkets. Don’t forget the trinkets. But we largely forget about the history and focus on three things: family, food, and American football. Not necessarily in that order.

But this week I am largely going to want to focus on the food.

Today we can look at a graphic coming from a team of researchers at the University of Illinois who examined the flows of food across the United States, down to the county level. It helped produce this map that shows the linkages between counties.

To be sure, the piece uses some line charts and other maps to showcase the links, but the star is really this map. But aside from its lack of Alaska and Hawaii, I think it suffers from one key design choice: leaving the county borders black.

The black lines, while thin, compete with the faint blue lines that show the numerically small links between counties. Larger trade flows, such as those within California, are clearly depicted with thicker strokes that contrast with the background political boundaries of the counties. But the light blue lines recede into the background beneath the borders.

I wonder if a map of solid, light grey fills and white county borders would have helped showcase the blue lines and thus trade flows a little bit better. After all, the problem is especially noticeable in the eastern half of the United States where we have much geographically smaller counties.

Hat tip to friend and former colleague Michael Schaefer for sharing the article in question.

Credit for the piece goes to Megan Konar et al.