What happens in Minnesota is pretty similar to what is happening in the states around us, so every now and then we like to show a regional look. The Southeast is completely calm, while the Midwest has the most action. Some of you won’t like reading this, but the death rates are suppressed because the vaccines are pretty effective at protecting against death. These are the current regional case and death charts, which Dave Dixon has updated, with the following notes:
- US case data by state is taken from a CDC data base: https://data.cdc.gov/Case-Surveillance/United-States-COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths-by-State-o/9mfq-cb36 , This data base appears to be corrupted, especially for California, in early 2021. Therefore, all data for all states prior to 8/1/2021 is the version published by the CDC on 10/24/2021. All data starting 8/1/2021 is the most current available data, published by the CDC on 12/3/2021. The CDC did not respond to inquiries regarding the apparent data errors.
- US deaths data is taken from a CDC data base here: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Week-Ending-D/r8kw-7aab
- State population estimates used to calculate rates per 100k are taken from the CDC data file nst-est2019-01.xlsx, available here: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-kits/2019/national-state-estimates.html
- The Midwest region currently has the highest case rate per 100k in the US, so Minnesota is not the only state in the region to be experiencing a surge in cases.
- Covid deaths in all regions are currently low and declining, although a lag in reporting by the CDC may be contributing to the recent declining trend.
Deaths in Michigan (3-day average) was 185 on December 2, the highest 3-day average throughout the pandemic. Not compelling support for vaccine efficacy.
Since there is only Covid 19 deaths Reported mostly in Minnesota and the rest of the USA. Is there data for the other primary killers prior to Covid 19. It seems that those numbers would decrease with Covid 19 preying on the weekend Immune systems, the elderly and so forth. Pneumonia, Emphysema, Kinney Failure, Heart Failure…. ect. Overall deaths is a number and easily manipulated. WE never see the WHOLE PICTUE. Just a thought- Keep up the great work!
The failure of the vaccination strategy continues to be evident in Michigan. 86% of over 65s fully vaccinated. Yet hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise to, or above, previous seasonal peaks.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/michigan-covid-cases.html
Not good, even if the vaccines are safe (or at least safe enough).
Thanks, Kevin (and Dave) for such thorough and balanced reporting and analyses of the data.
Over half the population has already had COVID per CDC estimates. That would reduce future deaths even if there were no vaccine. On the other hand, since anyone can apparently test positive for the virus regardless of actual illness, a certain percentage of all deaths are going to continue to be classified as COVID due simply to seasonal transmission. If we tested for the common cold this way how many deaths would we have to attribute to that?
exactly
I think the real comparison should be to India. It looks like most of India has basically solved the problem. You look at “https://coronovirus.jhu.edu/map.html” (Chrome browser works best for me.) The state of Uttar Pradesh has a population of 240,000,000 people and over the last 28 days has 270 cases and 8 deaths. (It looks like Omicron is starting to hit since they had been slowly going down to about 239 cases a few days ago.) Their current numbers would be like the entire US having fewer than 400 cases and 12 deaths in the last 28 days. It’s not the vaccine, it’s 70,000 contact tracers spread out testing anyone that might be a case and, when they get a positive case, they quarantine the household and give everyone a “COVID kit” with Ivermectin, Doxicycline, Vitamins B, C, and D, Zinc and Paracetemol (Tylenol), plus a digital thermometer and pulse oximeter. Then they start testing everyone in the neighborhood and repeat as needed. They put the kit together for about $2.65 (probably 190-200 rupees) each. The one outlier state, Kerala is working the vaccine route and has banned the use of Ivermectin. Kerala has 34,000,000 people or about 1/10th the entire US. The other outlier state, Bihar, apparently just cleaned up it’s data and added over 2000 deaths to their count. They were at 3 deaths. That’s why they look weird with 112 cases and 2429 deaths in the last 28 days. Bihar has over 100,000,000 people, is India’s poorest state and is right next to Uttar Pradesh. I don’t know how good either state’s numbers are, but I suspect they might even be more accurate than the US numbers given all the games everyone in the US seems to be playing. So, between those two states there are slightly more people than in the US and they’re getting orders of magnitude better numbers than the US.
It looks from the overall numbers like they had a rough time of it and then got a handle on how to deal with it–except in Kerala.
I’m disgusted that the US isn’t the one leading the way out, but I figure that we need to swallow our pride and follow along with what works.
(Note, to look at the states on the map, find “India” on the left column of the page, select it, then click the “Admin1” tab at the bottom of the column.)
Thanks for what you do!
You say ‘Exactly” to the great comments about the false testing, phony classifications of deaths, and the lack of ‘dry tinder’ behind this years lower deaths, yet you continue to beat the [vaccine] drum and devote time/energy to charts and graphs built on worthless data. Why are you are playing a roll in keeping the pandemic theatre in business? You obviously have a passion to help us out of this dystopian nightmare, which we have all acknowledged. Maybe you can devote the same efforts to exposing the lies instead of keeping score of a perverted game via worthless stats?
sorry you can’t get past your biases, the vaccines have kept a lot of people from dying
Since you show no data about vaccination rates or any correlation between deaths and vaccination, any thing you attribute to vaccines is simply an assumption.
not sure what your point is, but every post on data has detailed notes that explain exactly how things are calculated and we definitely have published data on vaccination rates and we have posted data on case rates, etc. So you may want to read more carefully.