LemonMelon
More 5G Than Man
One of my favorite statistics for measuring the health of a country/state, how it's being impacted by COVID-19, and how they're responding to it is the percentage of positive tests coming in.
When a country is first testing for coronavirus, what inevitably happens is that the most infirm get tested first, resulting in the highest fatality rates and the highest percentages of positive tests. Over time, as the general population is tested more frequently, more mild cases and negative results show up in the data.
Here is the percentage of negative results in some countries that have been praised for how well they've handled the pandemic:
Australia: 1.1%
South Korea: 1.7%
Finland: 5.1%
Germany 6.5%
Compare those figures to some countries that have been hammered by the virus:
Italy: 9.9%
Spain: 16.1%
UK: 16.1%
USA: 16.7%
It's pretty clear that early, aggressive efforts to test and isolate reveal better results in the short term. Now, how are some individual states doing? The numbers may surprise you, and I'll tell you why folks in California should not be getting frustrated by the static figures we're seeing right now.
So, first off, let's talk about New York. Their current percentage of positive tests is terrible and the main reason why the USA's is so bad as a whole: 33.2%. That's abysmal, one of the worst in the world. Every third person who gets tested there pulls up a positive result.
However, we've been told that New York is doing better. And they are, even if they're still not where they should be. They've conducted over 350,000 tests in the last 2 weeks, but only pulled in around 75,000 of their 319,000 positives. So their number has dropped to 21% in that stretch. It's still poor, but clearly an improvement. They are trending in a decent direction.
Now, let's do California. People were critical of our testing early in the month, and rightfully so. Despite all our efforts to isolate, we were still bringing in positives 11.3% of the time just two weeks ago. Not in New York's tier, but much further from South Korea's than we would like.
However, we've been reporting 20,000-30,000 tests a day for the past week, which is fantastic. Our new number? 7.6% since the start of the pandemic and 6.4% over the last two weeks, even lower than Germany's. Our number of positives has been only slightly above what we were seeing three weeks ago, but we're testing like crazy now. That's great news.
Finally, here are some states that you wouldn't think of as being highly impacted by the pandemic and their percentage of positive tests:
Utah: 4.2%
Oregon: 4.3%
Tennessee: 6.5%
Washington: 8%
And some other states that are hotspots:
Louisiana: 16.9% (7.9% this week)
Pennsylvania: 21.6% (19.4% this week)
Massachusetts: 22.2% (18% this week)
New Jersey: 47.5% (37.5% this week)
So I'll say this to all the protesters whining about not being able to go to the beach: chill out. Things are improving, even if you have to break out the calculator for a second to put a number to it. Crazy to me that California has a lower percentage of positive tests coming in than Washington, but that is a testament to how well we've handled this on the west coast. Ultimately, the goal should be limiting deaths and getting the numbers of positive tests down. Many states are trending down in the latter, even if things are changing very slowly regarding the former.
Source for the numbers was a mix of Worldometers and covidtracking.com.
When a country is first testing for coronavirus, what inevitably happens is that the most infirm get tested first, resulting in the highest fatality rates and the highest percentages of positive tests. Over time, as the general population is tested more frequently, more mild cases and negative results show up in the data.
Here is the percentage of negative results in some countries that have been praised for how well they've handled the pandemic:
Australia: 1.1%
South Korea: 1.7%
Finland: 5.1%
Germany 6.5%
Compare those figures to some countries that have been hammered by the virus:
Italy: 9.9%
Spain: 16.1%
UK: 16.1%
USA: 16.7%
It's pretty clear that early, aggressive efforts to test and isolate reveal better results in the short term. Now, how are some individual states doing? The numbers may surprise you, and I'll tell you why folks in California should not be getting frustrated by the static figures we're seeing right now.
So, first off, let's talk about New York. Their current percentage of positive tests is terrible and the main reason why the USA's is so bad as a whole: 33.2%. That's abysmal, one of the worst in the world. Every third person who gets tested there pulls up a positive result.
However, we've been told that New York is doing better. And they are, even if they're still not where they should be. They've conducted over 350,000 tests in the last 2 weeks, but only pulled in around 75,000 of their 319,000 positives. So their number has dropped to 21% in that stretch. It's still poor, but clearly an improvement. They are trending in a decent direction.
Now, let's do California. People were critical of our testing early in the month, and rightfully so. Despite all our efforts to isolate, we were still bringing in positives 11.3% of the time just two weeks ago. Not in New York's tier, but much further from South Korea's than we would like.
However, we've been reporting 20,000-30,000 tests a day for the past week, which is fantastic. Our new number? 7.6% since the start of the pandemic and 6.4% over the last two weeks, even lower than Germany's. Our number of positives has been only slightly above what we were seeing three weeks ago, but we're testing like crazy now. That's great news.
Finally, here are some states that you wouldn't think of as being highly impacted by the pandemic and their percentage of positive tests:
Utah: 4.2%
Oregon: 4.3%
Tennessee: 6.5%
Washington: 8%
And some other states that are hotspots:
Louisiana: 16.9% (7.9% this week)
Pennsylvania: 21.6% (19.4% this week)
Massachusetts: 22.2% (18% this week)
New Jersey: 47.5% (37.5% this week)
So I'll say this to all the protesters whining about not being able to go to the beach: chill out. Things are improving, even if you have to break out the calculator for a second to put a number to it. Crazy to me that California has a lower percentage of positive tests coming in than Washington, but that is a testament to how well we've handled this on the west coast. Ultimately, the goal should be limiting deaths and getting the numbers of positive tests down. Many states are trending down in the latter, even if things are changing very slowly regarding the former.
Source for the numbers was a mix of Worldometers and covidtracking.com.
Wow!
