There is a group od scientists and epidemiologists who run a website called People's CDC which tracks, among other things, wastewater discharge date. vEvery week they drop a report called the Covid Weather report. I cross reference their data with the data and trends from Dane Co. (Madison) Wisconsin and plug our numbers into their curves based on what we're doing now. Supposedly, we're a couple weeks behind them, we'll see. If I'm right, it's going to be a rocky ride the next few weeks. Hopefully, we're closer to our peak than their numbers would suggest. Here's some links of interest (if for no other reason that them sharing the data they derive their conclusions from.

People's CDC
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Dane County Respiratory disease dashboard (all seven pages of the weekly report)
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Knox County's Weekly Board of Health Covid-19 Data report
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Everyone but us seems to be taking this seriously, and based on the report set-ups have been taking it seriously for some time. We seem to be the only community I can find that's action plan is based on people believing Covid is a hoax.

My covid report hits have been up by about 50 percent over the last week or ten days. I have no definitive explanation as to why three covid posts would get over 30,000 hits in a week, but it looks to me like there's something going on that people want to know about. Normal would be about half that.

One guy who is unfamiliar with my work noted "The numbers will be terrible soon enough. Visited Tennova North ER last night, and it sounded like a TB ward in there. Myself and just a couple of others wearing masks. Its completely ridiculous that medical facilities are so flip about people's health, and I'm just hoping that I didn't pick up something worse while trying to get help. Decided to go to Tennova West, and it was less crowded, and at least the ER doc wore a mask. I've never seen your posts before, so I'm uncertain why you are getting flack. People just really don't give a shit about their neighbors anymore."

We sure could use a Board of Health and Dr. Buchanan right now. It would be nice to have someone competent running this show. This dereliction of public duty is now bordering on negligent homicide, it already meets the legal parameters, as I understand how the law's written.

Two of the three reports I study to draw weekly thoughts are out. This surge is not, thus far, appear to be a mass death event like previous surges. That is good news.

Hospitalizations are still out of control and that's not even including flu and RSV and pneumonia hospitalizations. That's bad.

When one read data points like this there is an underlying assumption that the numbers are accurate. I cannot vouch for that, and as a result, would advise folks to take everything in real time with a grain of salt. Hopefully, New Year's Eve will be the last major spreader event for a while. The curve appears to be flattening, which is good news, but training our local population to forego vaccinations appears to have negative effects on both our flu and RSV transmissions. That's bad.

Christmas infections will start hitting the hospitals in real time this week. Since we don't do real time analysis or actual public health stuff to control infectious outbreaks, anything beyond noting that all three diseases, Covid, RSV, and the flu are hitting at on time, and they are hitting a population that is highly vulnerable, we don't really have a strong basis for comparison. You know, it's okay to stay the course when you take a unique approach that is working, but our infectious disease response is failing. Will our nurses, doctors and staff continue to work under these conditions, or will they get fed up and leave our local medical infrastructure. either moving or shifting careers, like they have in the past.

Be careful out there. In most counties, government has purpose and function and there is some sort of community wide response to situations like this in order to keep the hospitals open. We don't do that here. We like to gamble with human lives to advance political agendas here.

Final note, anytime the curve flattens it brings hope to the community and this flattening should bring hope. Right now, all we really have is hope that our hospital system doesn't collapse before Jacobs leaves office and we can get someone in there that understands killing their constituents is not the purpose of local government.

This weeks numbers were released Thursday, and some interesting trends are emerging.First, our hospitalizations relative to reported cases is up, but it looks like like deaths relative to reported cases is down. This is quite the double edged sword.

First, the hospitalizations. Since our vaccination rate is so low as the virus begins to select for the unvaccinated (what it initially looks like may be occuring), it apparently is hitting the unvaccinated quite a bit more severely than previous mutations. We had been looking at a 10% hospitalization rate (per reported cases) and that has jumped to 20%. Beyond our low vaccination rate, I don't have any sort odf reasonable explanation for this change in dynamic. I have been comparing our numbers to Madison Wi. numbers and, despite being weeks ahead of us in the curve, their hospitalizations were about half ours, in a slightly bigger city. If this is the case, I would imagine future mutations may well follow that vector. This isn't good news. We do not have the staff to man enough beds. We can't staff our hospitals during covid lulls, much less surges. That's why our ambulances and emergency systems are failing. Lack of staffing. We have sat and watched our government create a generational problem that will take years, if not decades to fix. You can't run off full year classes of nurses and not expect an impact on local medical infrastructure.

The apparent death rate is another story. This number is a tad trickier to analyze. First, due simply to our system being overwhelmed, reporting accurate death statistics at this time is likely a low priority issue. Plus, it doesn't appear to track with our death numbers in general. Perhaps the rate of people paying for obituary notices goes up around Christmas. Perhaps its normal for deaths to increase around Christmas. But folks, we had four full pages of obituaries this week and that's not normal. Something is happening. Still, it would appear that our death rate is falling even as our hospitalizations rise. This is a pretty good indication that our treatments are working and becoming more effective. That would be the Occams Razor explanation and I really don't have reason to believe that's not the case. It would also be consistent with the theory that we will benefit from things other people are doing because we will draw on solutions found in other communities whether we are pursuing those goals ourselves, or not. Regardless of the reason, a falling death rate is a good thing.

As to looking ahead, it would appear we have some weeks left before our curve begins it's decline. First, we have the holidays and subsequent spread events that occur then, while being in the heart of a surge. That means more people spreading the virus to more people out to catch it. Do what you will this weekend. Know there is a risk involved. Adjust your actions according to your tolerance for risk. Second, people, even sick people, aren't acknowledging what is even going on. There is something of a news blackout gtoing on within the County Government. They seem to think that by pretending something isn't happening, they can deny that its happening. That strategy isn't working well. I sincerely don't know how much more stress our hospital system can take. We were significantly understaffed before this surge started and it takes hundreds of extra nurses, doctors and staff to serve this amount of patients. We simply don't have them. If you have to go to the hospital make sure you and whoever you are with are masked with an n-95. Even if you get sick the viral load you will be exposed to (assuming proper mask usage) will be significantly lower and will hopefully keep you out of the hospital as a patient. We are transitioning to a citizen ambulance force without training our citizens. That's a tough task for a community, but an alltogether expected reaction to our ambulance crisis. It's also a great way to fill up emergency areas with peoplke that don't need to be there while infecting hundreds needlessly. We are where we are.

We don't yet know how bad this surge will end up being. Get as fully vaccinated as you can, flu, covid, RSV, pnuemonia, shingtles, diptet, MMR the whole nine yards. Madison has 7 plus pathogens identified that are infecting people and sending them to the doctor. Our schools will reopen at the height of this surge and our HVAC systems issues have not been addressed, despite the fact that they have shown themselves to be deficient. We are sending our children into an experiment in biological warfare. We have no idea what's going to happen when we send them back to school to infect each other. Thus far, that strategy's not working too well. Be aware of your risk.

Good luck over the next few weeks or even months. We still aren't out of the pandemic stage into an endemic situation, but the disease and the immediate effects of a surge are clearly evolving. I'll stay abreat of and report this situation as best I can.
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This broke yesterday. Sorry I missed it. Here it is. (link...).

Be careful out there. This particular covid curve has a peak that we are closer to than not. I've never even so much as looked at an RSV or a flu curve, much less the four of them superimposed over each other. And while I haven't seen statistics yet, flu and RSV have both proven to be far more deadly to children than covid. Nobody's saying shit, everybody's sick, people are sending their sick kids to school to infect the healthy ones and everyone seems just fine with everything. I literally have to chuckle at the irony of old Sam Beckett.

I see these curves superimposed now, I should say. But this is the first time I've seen any result of what happens when you bring all four (common cold is prevalent this year as well. Looks like it came in ahead of the other three possibly weaking the overall ability to fight off a second, third and fourth wave of infection) so it's kind of hard to guess what to look for, but so far, this isn't good. Get vaccinated. Not for yourself. The idea is to cut transmission vectors. You're part of a much grander collective effort.