Day 174: Just Say No To Lockdowns

South Africa has exceeded 400,000 cases; it is now more than halfway to #4 Russia. Peru (#6) and #7 Mexico are also climbing steadily towards 400,000, and #15 Colombia and #20 Argentina are racking up more than 5,000 cases a day.

In the US, California is not quite #1 yet, but they're looking like a shoe-in for tomorrow. Louisiana at #12 has just broken the 100,000 case mark, and has joined the queue of states waiting to dethrone #9 Massachusetts. For unknown reasons, the MDPH has not published our case numbers for today yet (an unprecedented 5 hours after the usual time).

A paper in EClinicalMedicine evaluating policies and socio-economics in 50 countries concludes that lockdowns don't help, smoking does help, GDP is bad for you, and obesity definitely hurts. Despite not helping with mortality, lockdowns did improve recovery rates, which the authors speculate had to do with flattening the curve (as the kids say). They write off the GDP correlation as possibly testing-related, or too much disposable income for vacationing in COVID hotspots like ski resorts.

The authors are also mystified by the smoking data, wave their hands a bit about average age in smokier countries, and think more study is necessary, when plenty has been done already. That they can't read the literature doesn't necessarily mean they can't do the math (multivariable negative binomial regression), though the 50 countries with the most cases as of May 1st is not the most promising data set, all their statistical precautions aside. Still, it's encouraging that they reproduced a well-known pro-smoking result despite not knowing about it.

On the mapping front, now that there are two weeks of the new data we can restore the case rate map. These case rates will be a bit different from the previous ones provided by the MDPH, based on their super-secret population numbers; the new map is based entirely on US Census numbers for our cities and towns (rather than only partially in those cases where the state was not previously reporting its own rate).

(Pop out.)

On the down side, the testing rate map is lost and gone forever, because the MDPH no longer reports test rates on a per-person basis, but on a per-test basis. While perhaps still informative about testing policy, the new data is no longer particularly relevant to coronavirus, so has not been mapped.

P.S. Massachusetts cases are up 0.3% percent today.