CORONAVIRUS: Wednesday 12/23 roundup

| Coronavirus | West Seattle news

Tonight’s toplines in the pandemic:

NEWEST KING COUNTY NUMBERS: First, from the Seattle-King County Public Health daily-summary dashboard, the cumulative totals:

*58,750 people have tested positive, 474 more than yesterday’s total

*1,022 people have died, 10 more than yesterday’s total

*3,909 people have been hospitalized, 14 more than yesterday’s total

*721,289 people have been tested, 575 more than yesterday’s total

One week ago, the four totals we track were 55,212/954/3,765/703,210.

STATEWIDE NUMBERS: Find them, county by county, on the state Department of Health page,.

WORLDWIDE NUMBERS: See them, nation by nation, here.

STATE BRIEFING: We’re on a “downward trend,” state health officials said. Still way higher than anyone wants to dee, and “not out of the woods” yet, but statewide there’s a downturn – “hopeful numbers going in the right direction.” No post-Thanksgiving spike, so they’re urging everyone to keep up the safety measures for Christmas too. See the full briefing here.

VACCINE UPDATE: Thousands of people have been vaccinated, per the state’s update:

Last week, providers across the state began administering initial doses of COVID-19 vaccine to high-risk health workers, and now, more than 30,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been administered. We are thrilled with this progress in such a short time. This week, we allocated 44,850 Pfizer doses and 127,900 Moderna doses. That includes:

*153,925 doses distributed to more than 220 sites in 37 counties
*18,825 doses distributed to support long-term care facilities as well as 14 Tribes and Urban Indian Health Programs

During the aforementioned briefing, officials said it’ll be “several weeks” until vaccinations move on to the next eligible group.

EVICTION MORATORIUM EXTENDED: The city moratorium was extended a week ago through the end of March; today Gov. Inslee announced the same extension for the entire state.

GOT INFO? Email us at westseattleblog@gmail.com or phone us, text or voice, at 206-293-6302 – thank you!

David December 24, 2020 (3:23 pm)

Just a note about that downward trend: Looking at King County’s graphs, we’re almost always on a downward trend for the past two weeks. But when you look at it two weeks later, you’ll see the same downward trend now – but not from 2 weeks prior.
Results are often added to the correct date* weeks later, which perpetually creates the false impression that things are getting better. The incomplete numbers in the grey zone will almost always be lower – sometimes much lower – than the complete numbers that show up once all the results are added in.
Checking it a month ago, it showed things got much better in the previous 2 weeks.
Checking it 2 weeks ago, it showed things got much better in the past 2 weeks – but were actually awful in the previous time period.
Checking today, it shows things got much better in the past 2 weeks, but didn’t actually change much in the previous time period (bouncing down and up within a fairly narrow range).
And so on.
* – Their graph legend suggests they’re tabulating by the date the results came out. If this is correct, they’re regularly taking a week or more to add results. But more likely, they’re adding results to the date the sample was taken (often up to a week or more ago, from what health care providers are hearing). The latter explanation would make a LOT of sense (both as a procedure and as a measurement). But either way, it creates a false impression in the grey zone as described above – since the numbers regularly increase up to two weeks after the fact by significant amounts.

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