[M T]

 
Same thing with hospital capacity.  In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%.  That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

I am quite sure that you know where those numbers are.  Probably most news reports indicate where they got the numbers ("SCC's COVID-19 dashboard reports..").  If someone wants to know the exact numbers, it is easy to find them.  So I'm not sure what the point is, if you intended a point.

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Speaking of the numbers in SCC, the 7-day case rate is still growing as fast as it has been.  From the peak in mid July, the daily new cases fell at a somewhat stable (but somewhat wavy) rate (net, -6% a week), then beginning Sep 30, the cases rose at a pretty stable rate (about 10% a week).  But then on October 30, the curve steepened to something like 50% a week increase.   I had hoped that we would have seen a drop the rate of new cases but I don't see that yet.  R is still estimated at 1.4 (doubling cases every 13 days).

Indeed, SCC's ICU beds appear to be a concern.  The available beds has fallen from 48% (240 of 533) to 30% in a week, not because of a net increase of 12 COVID patients, but because of a decrease in the total number of ICU beds from 523 to 337.   I hope this is a short term increase due to Thanksgiving week vacations (a big drop on Saturday, another drop on Monday) of ICU staff.  It may be a strategic move to give breaks to staff now, before things fill up.

The two stepwise increases in growth rate of new cases seems too sharp to be coincidental or from a gradual change in behavior.  The slope in the 7-day new case rate at the SCC site doesn't seem to easily correspond to the history of R for the county., which I think it should.   The history of R has a steady slope (NOT a steady value as I expect) from late September to mid November.

[M T]

 
Same thing with hospital capacity.  In SCC, we see reports that hospitalized Covid patients have doubled in last 3 weeks and capacity is at X%.  That's all well and good, but do you not think it important to provide (i) total number of Covid patients (i.e., what that doubling means), (ii) total number of non-Covid patients (to get a sense of how Covid is impacting on capacity)?

I am quite sure that you know where those numbers are.  Probably most news reports indicate where they got the numbers ("SCC's COVID-19 dashboard reports..").  If someone wants to know the exact numbers, it is easy to find them.  So I'm not sure what the point is, if you intended a point.

---

Speaking of the numbers in SCC, the 7-day case rate is still growing as fast as it has been.  From the peak in mid July, the daily new cases fell at a somewhat stable (but somewhat wavy) rate (net, -6% a week), then beginning Sep 30, the cases rose at a pretty stable rate (about 10% a week).  But then on October 30, the curve steepened to something like 50% a week increase.   I had hoped that we would have seen a drop the rate of new cases but I don't see that yet.  R is still estimated at 1.4 (doubling cases every 13 days).

Indeed, SCC's ICU beds appear to be a concern.  The available beds has fallen from 48% (240 of 533) to 30% in a week, not because of a net increase of 12 COVID patients, but because of a decrease in the total number of ICU beds from 523 to 337.   I hope this is a short term increase due to Thanksgiving week vacations (a big drop on Saturday, another drop on Monday) of ICU staff.  It may be a strategic move to give breaks to staff now, before things fill up.

The two stepwise increases in growth rate of new cases seems too sharp to be coincidental or from a gradual change in behavior.  The slope in the 7-day new case rate at the SCC site doesn't seem to easily correspond to the history of R for the county., which I think it should.   The history of R has a steady slope (NOT a steady value as I expect) from late September to mid November.