Thursday, June 18, 2020

Day 139: Fire in the Hole

ProPublica condemns New York's policy of sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes with numbers (plus a Cuomo quote about "fire through dry grass"):
In the weeks that followed the March 25 order, COVID-19 tore through New York state’s nursing facilities, killing more than 6,000 people — about 6% of its more than 100,000 nursing home residents. [...]

States that issued orders similar to Cuomo’s recorded comparably grim outcomes. Michigan lost 5% of roughly 38,000 nursing home residents to COVID-19 since the outbreak began. New Jersey lost 12% of its more than 43,000 residents.

In Florida, where such transfers were barred, just 1.6% of 73,000 nursing home residents died of the virus. California, after initially moving toward a policy like New York’s, quickly revised it. So far, it has lost 2% of its 103,000 nursing home residents.
PlagueBlog notes that the numbers would be more useful if we knew how much in excess of last year's nursing home deaths they were. People winter in Florida or move to sunny California for good reason. A redditor defends New York's policy and the inevitability of the outcome in a comment, noting that the harder-hit continental European countries experienced similar death rates (though the structure of nursing care is probably not directly comparable between Europe and the US).

Massachusetts cases are up a quarter of a percentage point again today. Here's a map of the current state of testing by city and town, from Wednesday's MDPH data. (Note that estimates of positivity rates have been calculated for the small towns that the state omits.)
(Pop out.)

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