See the Data
We are releasing the backbone of the graphs we’ve been using, a Microsoft Power BI Report linked to data from The COVID Tracking Project, The New York Times, TN Department of Health and some of our own calculations of those data. It’s much better on a computer or tablet than a phone.
We update the data when we can, typically the NYT updates around 11 AM EST and CTP updates after 5 PM EST. We then import the data and re-upload it to the report.
Thank you to those beta tested this for us and gave us early feedback.
Nationwide, new cases and new deaths are both set to be down or steady for the third day in a row. We’ve talked a lot about the issues with the quality of the data (it’s not great). At JM Addington we focus on the trends of the data and we’re optimistic that we are seeing both of those headed in the downward direction.
The data currently supports the IMHE model (on a national scale) that COVID-19 is peaking in the next week.
Tennessee is up to 4,600 cases and 94 deaths, a 2% mortality rate of known cases. The new cases and deaths are both up compared to yesterday. By comparison and warning, New York added 10,000 cases and nearly 800 deaths yesterday.
New York alone has more cases than the next highest country, Spain. New Jersey would be 10th on that list, if US States were counted as countries.
If you compare Tennessee directly to New York you almost can’t separate TN from the X-Axis.
And that would be true of most states. NY, NJ and MI make up half of the total cases in the US. LA, CA, MA, PA, FL, and IL all have more than 10,000 but less than 20,000 cases.
The significance to us is twofold: first, COVID-19 is playing out so differently in different parts of the US that they are almost different worlds. The reporting doesn’t always make that clear, but for most of us, COVID-19 isn’t what is shown on the news.
At the same time, it’s cautionary that it can get a lot worse. This is how exponential growth works, if you stop something doubling at say, 100 cases, it makes a huge difference compared to stopping the doubling at 1,000 cases.
Tennessee
Tennessee’s board of education voted on new rules that drop credits for graduating seniors. Students cannot have grades lowered during distance learning, but they can increase. It’s not official until the Attorney General official approves of it. The TN Department of Education (TDOE) requested public feedback by end of day Monday on how to spend dollars earmarked for education from the CARES Act. This money won’t arrive soon: the feds won’t take the state applications until at least mid-April.
TDOE has also partnered with PBS to release 30 hours of educational programming for students in 1st – 8th grade. You can find the schedule here and their YouTube channel here. They have even released student packets and teacher lesson plans for parents.
During today’s conference call with reporters Governor Lee declined to give a date that he decide whether or not to renew his stay-at-home executive order, “data changes quickly,” he said. That order remains in place through the end of Tuesday, April 14th, currently. During the call Lee also expressed that the state continues to plan for a surge of COVID-19 cases, although the timing and size of that surge was unknown.
Vanderbilt is expected to release a model specifically for Tennessee tomorrow. There has been some early reporting on it but no details until Friday.
Yesterday Lee issued executive order 25 which explicitly bars dental clinics (and related fields) from any non-emergency procedures, requires the postponement all of elective procedures, and, “encourages,” non-hospital healthcare workers to donate their PPE to the state. This order merely makes official much of what has already been done voluntarily.
Financial
We know some business owners who have been officially approved by their banks for the PPP loans. No one has seen money hit their bank account yet.
While we were writing this update we approved for the PPP, “awaiting instructions on funding.”
The president, as we write, is announcing new loans for larger businesses and work on increasing the funding available for the PPP loan. The PPP loan initially had $350bn behind it, which is widely expected to run out.
BlueCross of Tennessee sent us an email stating that they are waiving all member costs for COVID-19 treatment:
As part of our mission to serve your employees, we’re removing their barriers to receiving care. From now until May 31, 2020, we’ll waive member cost sharing for COVID-19 treatments, including hospitalizations.
BlueCross of Tennessee
If your employee or one of their dependents is diagnosed with COVID-19, they won’t pay out-of-pocket costs for treatment from in-network providers, including inpatient treatment.
International
Italy clearly has a hold on this, a great sign for the rest of the world. There is a long way to go, but things are headed where they need to be.
Spain made progress and then plateaued:
Both German and French data are noisy. New cases and new deaths aren’t moving together as clearly as Italy and Spain.
Get In Touch
Need help thinking this through? Access to more data? Help getting your technology in order to handle what’s here and what’s coming? Contact us today.
Other
Thanks to those that have shared kind words or liked these posts. We’re doing out best to put out data-driven analysis, each one of these takes about 2 hours. It’s helpful to know that they are being read.
If you want copies of the Excel sheet and PowerBI Reports we use to put these together email us, info@jmaddington.com. Right now, our PowerBI combines data from JHU, NYT, COVID Tracking Project, IMHE and the TN Department of Health. Most sets are updated daily.
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