Overview Charts for the States

You know the great overview chart for Minnesota that Dave Dixon puts together periodically, well here is a video clip with a chart for every state like that.  You can contrast and compare, look at any state you want.  The data is a little funky to work with, see Dave’s comments below.

1. Covid cases per day by state are published every weekday by the CDC here: https://data.cdc.gov/Case-Surveillance/United-States-COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths-by-State-o/9mfq-cb36
2. Cases are tabulated on a reported basis, not on a date of infection or date of test basis. The states report cumulative Covid cases to the CDC as they are tabulated, but the date at which the infection was actually tested for is unknown. The time required for each state to report a Covid test is also unknown. Minnesota, for example, reports cases both by the date of specimen collection and by date of report. From this we can determine that it takes Minnesota 5.8 calendar days on average to report 90% of PCR positive teats, and 6.7 days to report 95% of positive tests. Antigen test reports are a little better at 5.0 rays to report 90% of positive results, and 5.6 days to report 95% of positive results.
3. Covid hospital admission data is taken from a US Department of Health and Human Services website here: https://healthdata.gov/Hospital/COVID-19-Reported-Patient-Impact-and-Hospital-Capa/g62h-syeh/data
4. The hospital admissions are a total of the adult daily and pediatric admissions, which are listed separately in the data base.
5. It is not stated how frequently the hospital admission data is updated.
6. Hospital admission data only starts on July 1.
7. The daily Covid deaths in each state are taken from a CDC data base here: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Week-Ending-D/r8kw-7aab
8. The deaths data base is updated every weekday. The deaths per week are tabulated according to the date of death and are updated over time.
9. The data was validated by comparing Minnesota’s overview chart to similar charts built from daily data published by the Minnesota Department of Health. The charts match very well, with minor differences mainly due to different definitions of weeks. No other states have been checked thus far.
10. All charts were generated using the same scaling on the vertical axis in order to make it easier to compare one state to another. Cases are scaled to the left vertical axis, at 0 to 1500 cases per week per 100k of population. Hospital admissions and deaths are scaled to the right vertical axis, at 0 to 150 admissions or deaths per week per 100k of population.
11. Comments on specific state charts:
    • Kentucky has a proportionally very high rate of hospital admissions. Most states have hospital admissions less than 10% of cases, as seen by the green hospital admission line being lower than the blue case line. Kentucky has a proportionally much higher rate of hospital admission. This is likely a data or reporting problem, and not an actual higher rate of hospitalization. It is possible that Kentucky reports significantly lower Covid case levels, such as due to lower rates of random testing, which would also cause the hospital admission rate to be elevated.
    • Mississippi also has a dramatically elevated hospital admission curve during certain periods of time. This is the dating reported in the admission data base, and is likely due to data reporting anomalies.