What resources do you follow for COVID news?
State of New Jersey weekly updates (email)
Maplewood Department of Health weekly updates (email)
I check this site for RT, which is rarely reported on elsewhere in a consistent comprehensible way:
This gives you daily and total cases and deaths for every Essex County town:
For New Jersey stats, the COVID Alert NJ app does a good job. It also has some contact tracing attributes as well as a survey that gives you a reading on people who volunteer their symptoms +/- status.
And well, thank you. To remind people, I do not work as a virologist or epidemiologist. I relay reports on things occasionally and add my own commentary and analogies.
Dave Williams is a college friend who is an all-around scientist who puts out this collection of stats on his website. https://covid19.slashdave.com/?id=21&modecompcounty=SV&fbclid=IwAR3gtfXJEYxtVZDJ0q25JjU5434t3iUW0KAQzNa0jJXZh51j9WVm1y76Jik
You can use the menu options to get all sorts of compilations plotted.
I keep looking at the CDC website, but it's annoying to use. Unfortunately, some of their data releases are very slow.
I'm most interested in how much hospitalizations are reduced by vaccination status (if any). There was a big impact previously, but the data is now almost 1.5 months old (from Nov 20), which is pre-Omicron, so really not informative for present-day. (And the downloadable public use datafile has data through 1/3/2022, but no vaccine status info to go along with the outcome (symptomatic/hospitalization/death) data). The next vaccine-by-hospitalization data release will probably be Jan 21, and only have data through Dec 20.
I'm trying to find any state databases that are providing this specific info sooner...
I agree with those mentioned, and also following these pandemic health commentators on Twitter, and their linked articles:
1. Andy Slavitt. @ASlavitt
2. Eric Feigl-Ding. @DrEricDing
3. Ashish K Jha. @ashishkjha
4. Prof Peter Hotez. @PeterHotez
5. Laurie Garrett. @Laurie_Garrett
6. Leana Wen, MD. @DrLeanaWen
FWIW, I read New Scientist each week, which keeps me updated with international research without overwhelming me with too much technical data I can’t absorb. This isn’t to say reporting trivialises or minimises the information; it’s ‘chunked’ into language, diagrams and lengths I can remember and can refer back to.
Guardian Australia keeps a rolling series of daily graphs and live blogs that neatly summarise each State’s and the national information. Yesterday, for example, I learnt that currently my region is one of the worst in the country for the recent surge in serious cases, confirming my affirmation to stay home. (I been quite free roaming until this week) GA’s graphs also compare us with international case centres, so it’s useful encapsulation.
Both BBC and ABC Australia (both online, checked a couple of times a day) keep me updated with big stuff - overviews, what’s being approved/removed in vaccines & treatment, workforce issues etc. (ABC has the Dr Norman Swan updates, too, which are soooo clear) And of course a few of you know I check once a month or with ATAGI & TGA, our CDC and medicines review boards (re my medicine allergies).
MOL keeps me reassured that a normal life is possible, even when it seems idiots are in charge and nearly everyone you know is sick. Thank you. (A couple of friends also in Europe reassure me)
This is a really good thread. Thanks for all the good websites. I generally just check the CDC, NJ State, Township, and reliable news sources for up-to-date info. But it is good to know that many of you are really digging deep into the numbers to help us all make sense of the pandemic. I do like to listen very carefully to Fauci. He is a straight shooter on this and like the CDC reports, he uses his words sparsely and carefully and often with qualifiers that need to be paid attention to. I think this is why some people misunderstand him by not listening carefully and by only hearing half of what he says.
sprout said:
...I'm trying to find any state databases that are providing this specific info sooner...
California has a data dashboard: https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#postvax-status
It has the most up-to-date data I can find on:
- Hospitalizations x vaccination status: Lags 3 weeks behind (ends 12/19), and currently concludes:
- From December 13, 2021 to December 19, 2021, unvaccinated people were 10.1 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
- Deaths x vaccination status: Lags 4 weeks behind (ends 12/12), and currently concludes:
- From December 6, 2021 to December 12, 2021, unvaccinated people were 16.6 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
(Note: This California data may still reflect vaccination's effectiveness to the DELTA variant, as it is mostly before the OMICRON became the majority variant (which was sometime between 12/18 and 12/25, according to the CDC tracker of variant proportions in US, and by region: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions)
I'm curious to see if the vaccinations maintain the same strength to Omicron.
I follow and highly recomend a podcast (and on youTube) "This Week in Virology". Every Saturday there is a clinical update from a NYC-area clinician with MD/PhD (expertise is parasitology). The latest especially addresses some of your concerns Sprout: TWiV 850: COVID-19 clinical update #96 with Dr. Daniel Griffin. The information is geared to clinicians, but you can tell that many non-MDs listen to him as well, and makes an effort to be accessible.
Dr. Griffin is occasionally on national/local news, and has been on the Brian Lehrer show.
TWiV also puts together 1-2 additional shows/week in which virologisits (etc.) discuss papers, guest's research, etc. For non-specialists it is harder to follow, but not the rule. I find their banter very interesting as well.
My take after listening to ^ episode is that you are in a really good place if you are vaccinated and I am feeling much less anxious/worried about going in to school tomorrow in a district (not here) that had over 30% of my hs students out due to 'covid concerns'.
Cool. I'll take a listen. I need a distraction from listening to podcasts on day-trading low cap altcoins. ;-)
AARP webinars are another resource. They hold these frequently and include top experts who provide a brief update and then open the meeting to questions from the audience. The questions generally focus on the issues of concern to most.
- NYT charts on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. I find this helpful for a top level understanding of the situation, and also broad patterns.
- The Atlantic magazine. I've found their reporting here to be really solid and can honestly say that few things about how the pandemic is playing out have surprised me, as there's nearly always been some article previewing the possibilities a few weeks to a few months before those possibilities become our realities -- whether that's new variants, the need for boosters, or even just setting the baseline level of uncertainty to expect (the latter perhaps being the most important; realizing how much is unknown and unknowable really helps set expectations).
- Your Local Epidemiologist, a blog by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, a professor at UTHealth. As she puts it, "The purpose of this page is to 'close the communication loop' by providing a direct line of science to you. My posts are 100% data-driven and backed by the most recent scientific evidence. Some of these are my own analyses, some of these are based on other brilliant scientists peer reviewed studies, and some are science-driven resources."
- Peter Wick and Bub on these forums