Sue Seboda, May 7, 2020
Let’s examine the curve that Governor Hogan has used to guide reopening decisions. Does it make sense? Here is my latest dive into the data and it is disturbing at best.
As of May 7, 2020 nursing home patients accounted for 57% of all corona virus deaths in Maryland. While there is much discussion of these numbers, we should take this one step further and also ask why any decision to reopen should be based on data that includes nursing home stats. While the lives of the elderly are just as important as any other life, they are not the folks who will restart this economy. Ideally two curves would be examined, daily death data for people over and under 65 net of nursing home stats. Unfortunately Maryland has not provided that data and is unlikely to do so. The best we can do is use the info that Maryland posts daily and create charts for under and over 60 and under and over 70.
To that end, I gathered the daily data by age group from April 1 to the present and with simple math determined the number of deaths each day. With that information, data was collated and charts created.
The trends speak volumes. The under 60 and 70 charts are not the ominous curve that Governor Hogan has used to maintain economy crushing stay at home orders. Instead we see flat death trends for those under 60 and a very slight uptick when include deaths between 60-69. The frequently discussed curve can only be found for those over 70. The bottom line? For the majority of the workforce, the curve has been essentially flat since at least April 15.
What do we learn from these charts? The first thing is that we have failed the elderly in nursing homes. The second is that Governor Hogan has based his decisions on the wrong curves. This data suggests that we should have changed course some time ago and put a serious strategy in place to protect the vulnerable and let the young kickstart this economy. But no, Hogan never looked at things this way or, if he did, he ignored it.
We will debate forever why Governor Hogan and others ignored commonsense strategies in favor of extended lockdowns even after they knew that the much feared curve only applied to the elderly. We will wonder why they never shared this information with the citizens. We will wonder why they simultaneously crushed small business, added untold debt and failed to protect the vulnerable. What a total failure of government. And how disgraceful that we let them do it.
Details
- Even though the curve is flat for younger people, the corona virus is still with us. At every age, we must continue to maintain physical distance, use proper hygiene and stay away from the vulnerable.
- Maryland only releases number of cases and deaths by age group. I did not chart cases because the testing rate has increased so it is not an apples and apples comparison. In my view, since the hospitals have capacity, the only measure that should guide decisions is how many people live and die from the disease.
- On April 15, Maryland changed how they accounted for deaths because there was a reduction. From that point on Maryland included confirmed and “probable” deaths. For this reason I assume that death counts prior to April 15 included probable deaths. Because probable deaths are too ambiguous, the charts begin on April 16 and only include confirmed deaths.
- Please note that the data Maryland publishes daily is silent on comorbidities. Therefore the data includes folks who died with or without a serious underlying condition. This is important because many have said we should stay shutdown because a large percentage of the population have a serious underlying condition. This does not appear to be a valid argument because the data shows that there is a flat trend for those under 60 regardless. Between 60 and 70, I suspect underlying conditions play a larger role but without more data it is difficult to speculate. Ideally, we would know how many people died in each age group with a comorbidity.
- It would also be excellent if we knew how many people with underlying health conditions survived corona virus.