The gross granularity of that map is wildly misleading.
People mostly get infected at work, or from a household member who got it at work. That map just tells you where they live, which should correlate with low income and overcrowding.
People mostly get infected at work, or from a household member who got it at work. That map just tells you where they live, which should correlate with low income and overcrowding.
People in the hardest-hit communities (unless you define that differently), don’t all work where they live any more or less than anywhere else. But they shop there, eat at restaurants there, get their hair cut there, etc. And yet so many more than elsewhere have died from the covid. There’s more to it than population density. Income isn’t the point, and in any case many have no work at all right now. So they’re at home.
IMO: People should receive a fraction of government financial support that’s proportional to the extent of their local community distress. In return they could reasonably be asked continue to adhere more stringently than ever, as much as practical, to masks, spacing guidelines, and business activity.
The hardest-hit are low-income people who share overcrowded households. They can’t all afford to stay home so some get infected at high-risk jobs and infect other household members. That’s why the number that’s the best predictor of whether you’ll get Covid-19 is your Zip code.
I don’t disagree. I just think there’s more to it.
There’s not.
“Immigrants may hesitate to seek medical care, and employees who work in the food service industry often lack adequate paid sick leave, said Jose Figueroa, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.”
This quote from the article you posted cites two of the “more to it” things that go beyond population density.
I also suspect that there’s a prejudicial bias manifest in some healthcare services that puts these people into a lower-priority category. I don’t know that as a documented fact, which is why I said “I just think there’s more to it.”
The hardest-hit areas are those with lots of low-income extended households. It’s as simple as that.
They’re not the only people who get sick, of course.
Actually, you’re right about potential misleading inferences due to differences in granularity on maps like these, but that only strengthens my argument that metrics used for restrictions shouldn’t be averaged over entire counties, with hard breaks at county boundaries. Even a crude level of granularity, like that in the SD Union-Tribune map is better than averaging the entire county and assigning a single “tier” to it.
(Also note that your map is cases; the one I posted is deaths.)
You’ve got it backwards. The rules regions need to be large enough that few people will travel to evade restrictions.
Movement and mixing between regions, no matter how small or large, is going to happen. Hard boundaries, no matter how small or large, are fictitious constructs; bureaucratic zones – even if you’re talking about entire states. And really, do you think a significant fraction of people are willing to drive far from home just to “evade restrictions”? In fact, just how big do you think the “rules regions” need to be (up to and including just one – the entire state), so that few people engage in restrictions evasion?
It would definitely be best if we had a uniform national policy and operational strategy in place throughout the US; an agreed-to construct that would be considered fair to all in all states (well, at least by most). But we don’t.
And then there’s the global perspective. There are also “hard” international boundaries. Can the WHO and UN establish a uniform, internationally accepted world-wide policy, with teeth in it?
Those numbers have too much of a time delay to efficient in controlling the direction of a pandemic. You need short term readouts which give you “immediate” access to data which indicates how the pandemic develops over days and positivity rate and cases/100000 are the best to track in a fast changing environment whereas death and ICU units often track 2-4 weeks later which is way too late to be useful
Good point. Yes, I agree.
Maybe the rate of increase in the total number of deaths during the 2-4 weeks prior might be better? In SD county, the cumulative number of deaths has been almost a linear curve, though, with total ICUs used hovering right above it, also linear, for many months.
But yes, way too much of a delay. So a rolling average of per-capita positivity updated daily appears to remain as the best metric for feedback and control, and could in principle (and perhaps soon in fact) be updated in almost real time.
The faster the feedback from any agreed-to metric, the faster the response – with concomitant improvements in both robustness and stability (along with public acceptance) of controls.
You’re fantasizing. It’s currently taking so long to get test results that they’re almost useless for suppressing outbreaks.
It looks like San Diego’s in good shape on all of its health-order triggers except that there are three times the target number of community outbreaks.
https://sdcounty.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/30b5e0fa2a5f4404b1219d8cd16b2583
It depends on where you are. Two of my friends had their results within 24 hours in two different testing locations in LA. But I have heard that the average time is much longer in CA and the rest of the nation…something like 3 to 7 days.
Let’s hope that localized micro-management is replaced by coordinated national guidance under Biden. Dr. Fauci can provide the popular medical leadership that’s needed. At a bare minimum, uniform testing protocols, procedures, and turn-around times are essential, coast to coast. And the turn-around time has to be no more than one day, maybe two, no matter where.
1 Like
The guidance from Sacramento has been nearly at the opposite end of the spectrum from micromanagement.
1 Like
I was talking about nationally, not any one state, but I can see how my comment could be interpreted that way. If you remove the “micro”, it’s what I meant to say. Mia culpa.
1 Like
And now there’s talk here in SD that we might return to the outer ring of hell if we don’t get our act back together very soon. We’re right at the borderline wrt the latest – now 4-tier – statewide restrictions formula. I’m glad I got in a couple of indoor dining meals while it was allowed, this latest time.
Doesn’t look good for sure, but I wish we had more emphasis on enforcing the rules that are in place–shame on SDSU! Blaming the state doesn’t seem right, when they are trying to protect us. Still see folks walking around NP ,and the residential areas where people park, without masks but with entitled attitude. Wish we could pull together to beat this thing and save our small business!
2 Likes
I have a friend who lives in the SDSU area, in fact, she and her neighbors have many mini-dorms around them. They have been complaining to SDSU about the lack of compliance for weeks, basically since the kids started coming back in mid-August. They have gotten no response and no cooperation from the university. NBC did a lead-story feature on one of their 6 pm news casts shortly after Labor Day when there were only about 150-175 confirmed cases.
3 weeks later SDSU is now over, or close to 800 confirmed cases and the university continues to wring their hands and say the bulk of the cases are in off campus housing and there isn’t much they can do about it. Meanwhile, the kids are continuing to party, continuing to go to Trader Joe’s, neighborhood restaurants and businesses…the same TJs, restaruarants and businesses that the neighborhood home owners patronize as well. There is a pretty deep anger and resentment from home owners towards SDSU and SDSU is not being a very good neighbor in their eyes. As an SDSU grad I am appalled and disappointed in their actions and attitudes towards attempting to contain their outbreak.
2 Likes