Tuesday, September 22, 2020

US Surpasses 200,000 COVID-19 Deaths | County Crosses 45k Cases | New Research Finds Pet Susceptibility | GAO: USA Lacks Plan

September 22 is World Rhino Day (Taken 6.28.2020 at San Diego Zoo Safari Park

In advance of today's weekly media briefing with California Health and Human Services Secretary, Dr. Ghaly, I thought I would do a little explainer on that fun little "linear adjustment factor" and COVID-19 news. State website generally updates at 11am, the County has a special meeting today at 3pm, with County data usually updates after 5pm.
More after the jump. 



I was reading through more of the Blueprint for a Safer Economy and came across this explainer: Update of the case rate adjustment factors for tier assignment. Beginning 9/15, case rates will be adjusted based on California median (instead of the average) testing volume, and will be fixed from the week ending 9/5th for the next 4 weeks assignments through 10/6th. The state testing median was 216.35 as determined on 9/15, while San Diego was at 198.8 tests per 100k people. I still don't understand the math that resulted in our adjustment number of 1.032, but whatever, it appears that is our factor is constant until October. I suppose one bright light for San Diego is that our positivity rate is 3.8% for the 7 day period before a 7-day lag, and if that gets below 3.5%, we no longer use the adjustment factor. But as the US surpassed 200,000 deaths today and the county will surely surpass 45,000 cases with today's statistics update, we are very much embedded in this mess for a long while more. 

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