Pandemic Numbers: Should We Be A Bit More Worried?

NY Times reports that based on numbers reported by the city and the state, “At least 4 new coronavirus deaths and 798 new cases were reported in New York City on Nov. 3. Over the past week, there has been an average of 841 cases per day, an increase of 50 percent from the average two weeks earlier.”

That is not what you hear from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is slowly starting to say there may be a problem. We have been above the 550 case threshold for 5 days now, and today’s number is the highest yet – 628 cases. Today Mayor acknowledged that we have a problem and that the number of people hospitalized with COVID19 is also increasing. Four people died yesterday in Brooklyn from COVID19.

“Some of that explained by the hotspots in Brooklyn and Queens. Some of that, explained by a greatly expanded testing, because testing is now on a much higher level. We’re now up to – have the ability to do over 75,000 tests a day in New York City. That’s the highest we’ve been throughout this entire pandemic.”

While it is great to know the city can now do 75,000 tests, it does not mean it is actually doing that many. The peak recorded day so far, according to the city’s own data, was on October 7, when 55,757 tests were performed.

These tests are in places that have the least infection rates, according to the city, which ends up distorting the true infection rate distribution picture:

The NYT COVID-19 tracker allows you to also look up average daily cases by zip code, gives mini snippets of 14-day trends – a much more useful look at what’s happening than the four-week averages the city is releasing – and none of which look promising for Brooklyn.

While neighborhoods in the Red and Yellow zones declined from the initial peaks – the maps seem to show they are rising again.

11230 zip code is reporting an average of 18 cases per 100,000 residents over the last 7 days.

11233 is at 14, 11204, and 11239 are at 13,11214, 11224, 11213, and 11211 are all at 11, 11235 is at 9, and 11229, 11215, and 11208 are all above 8 cases per 100,000 residents daily.

And finally, why are we not talking about Staten Island? The borough-wide infection rate there is at 2.6%. Data from 11/3:

Here’s data from the Governor on Red and Yellow Clusters: