U.S. Covid-19 cases per capita

"Dusty Ventures" (dustyventures) 03/23/2020 at 18:20 • Filed to: None

6

41

I found myself with an abundance of free time today, so I decided to break down coronavirus cases in each state per 100k people. The results were fascinating, showing just how dire things are in New York, with 107 cases per 100k people (or in other words for every 1,000 New Yorkers one has tested positive for coronavirus), while California, which currently has the fourth most cases, actually sits 26th per capita. Washington has the third highest case load per capita, but by far the highest death toll, with roughly one out of every 80,000 Washingtonians dying from covid-19 to date. Meanwhile West Virginia not only has the lowest per capita rate, but is less than half the second lowest state. That said, these numbers are as much a representation of how much each state is testing as they are about the number of actual cases present. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and will try to update the numbers at least once per day.

Here’s the top 30

MM54 > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:27

3

Thank you. This is the data that should be getting reported for spread, not so much the raw numbers. Yes, the US has or will have more cases than Italy, there’s literally 5x as many people here.

Etc.

I’m not trying to downplay the significance of things, but people need to be realistic about things. The media deals in drama - it’s what brings viewer, ad revenue, and thus their money. Unfortunately most people take everything at face value.

ranwhenparked > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:29

0

And hospitalization rates seem to vary wildly. It seems 20% is the typical standard, but China was at about 15% and some places have been lower so far (Pennsylvania has been running  at about 10%).

jimz > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:31

2

Unsurprisingly due to its density over half of the cases in NY are concentrated in NYC and it’s immediate surroundings.

fintail > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:32

0

This would be interesting to track over time, to see how it is being spread. Maybe on a daily or similar cadence . Might also catch some inconsistencies, as some numbers might end up looking questionable . (I’m not volunteering to do this :) )

DC3 LS, Fuck Hyundai, now and forever > ranwhenparked 03/23/2020 at 18:33

0

I’d imagine a lot of that is gonna come down to age of the population and percent of the population that smokes. I’d expect America to have quite a bit lower rates of death and even hospitalization from that alone .

facw > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:34

8

I’m not sure this information has much meaning though, because it’s not cases per capita, it’s known cases per capita.

Honestly, right now the most important metric would probably be tests per capita. The higher that is, the better your state is doing. At some point, when there is sufficient testing resources to meet demand, then maybe cases per capi t a, or posi tives per test might be meaningful, but in the absence of sufficient tests, the former doesn’t tell us much at all, and the later may just be telling us where a state if focusing with its testing.

ranwhenparked > DC3 LS, Fuck Hyundai, now and forever 03/23/2020 at 18:35

0

Pennsylvania has like the 2nd oldest population in the US after Florida, so either its an encouraging sign, or just means it hasn’t hit areas with that demographic yet. Something like 1/3 of Washington’s total was from a single hospice care facility. 

ZHP Sparky, the 5th > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:38

2

Deaths per capita is certainly a logical metric (but let’s also not forget how low population density in the US is compared to many other countries - that SHOULD help us, but it’s like we’re doing everything in our power to not bother) .

Deaths/infected is used primarily as a tracker to assess how lethal the virus is for those who do get it. And sadly it’s far too early to be counting our blessings with either statistic given that we haven’t quite hit max capacity at hospitals yet (but are expected to do so over the coming week or two).

Also doesn’t help how poor out testing has been as you mentioned, and what an absolutely crap job we’re doing with our containment efforts. It could be a pretty vicious cycle if we continue to fail to properly identify and quarantine people to stop the spread while also continuing to overwhelm our medical capacities.

Even under a stay at home order people were flocking to the beaches like it was a regular spring break out here in Oregon this past weekend.

BaconSandwich is tasty. > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:38

1

That’s insane.

To put that in perspective, the city I live in (Lethbridge) is ~100,000 people, and I think we’ve got 5 cases that tested positive so far. If we were at New York’s level, we’d have ~107 cases.

People here are mostly taking the social distance thing seriously.

Dusty Ventures > MM54 03/23/2020 at 18:38

4

The big concern right now is that over the past week the U.S. case rate has increased by roughly 27% per day, nearly three times the rate of Italy. If each country continues to grow their case loads at their current rates we’ll pass Italy in total cases by Friday and pass them per capita by April 9. At which point (for a real sense of how fast this is spreading) 1.9 million Americans will have tested positive.

Dusty Ventures > facw 03/23/2020 at 18:43

3

This is true, and I pointed that out in my post. Testing isn’t consistent state-to-state or even county-to-county so there’s a lot of discrepancy in the numbers. I did try to find number of tests per state but couldn’t find any solid data.

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:44

0

Ooooh New York finally passed WA for most deaths, but WA is still leading comfortably in deaths per 100k!

wafflesnfalafel > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:49

0

yay! Washington is the winner! I predict the Guv na locks us down at his 5pm press conference today. I was hoping since we were “ ground zero” it would scare folks into behaving when they can - but that just is not happening enough at this point.

facw > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:50

1

https://covidtracking.com/data/ has negative as well as positive test numbers, which can give you an idea of the total number of tests (negative numbers are somewhat sketchy though, and not always up to date).

NJ is an interesting standout in that they have a very high positive percentage. It’s not clear if they are reporting differently, or just only testing those who almost certainly have covid-19.

MM54 > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 18:52

1

I believe that a portion of that is that testing rates have really been picking up as well, as tests become more available; that said I’m sure the same thing happened in Italy and we can see where they’re at now. Testing is inherently a flawed way to get the data (limited tests, only testing high-risk people, etc) but there’s no other way to magically know exactly how many people are sick.

I’ve not been deeply diving into the data (frankly it doesn’t do me any good to do so) but anecdotally from what I’ve seen, I would be surprised if the current exponential growth continues for another nearly 3 weeks. If the current day over day growth is fairly constant then that tells me we’re nearing the point of inflection where it will very gradually start to slow down, but again I don’t know how consistent it is d/d.

All-around a bad situation

Dusty Ventures > facw 03/23/2020 at 18:52

0

Thanks! Adding now

DipodomysDeserti > BaconSandwich is tasty. 03/23/2020 at 19:37

1

To put that in perspective, I live in a city with around 6 million people who’s first case was back in January and we have 139 confirmed cases. Your town’s morbidity is twice mine. However,  I think the numbers are super deflated in big cities and that people have been being exposed to this thing for a while.

Dusty Ventures > MM54 03/23/2020 at 19:44

1

There’s been a steady average of 25% day-on-day over the last three weeks, starting March 2 when cases climbed from 75 to 100. The lowest single day increase was 19.3% (it’s dipped into the 19's three times in those 22 days) and the highest was 32.9% (it’s cleared 30% 3 times as well). I did add testing data to the spreadsheet, thanks to facw. Roughly 294,000 tests have been administered in the U.S. with a national average of about 15% being positive. This does vary state-to-state of course, with only 1.5% being positive in New Mexico (5,400 tests) and a whopping 75% positive in Ohio (582 tests)

ranwhenparked > Dusty Ventures 03/23/2020 at 20:23

2

And I just noticed my state is at an 8% hospitalization rate right now, with only 3 people on ventilators. Governor says the system's handling it fine with regular capacity, but we almost doubled the total diagnosed over the weekend, so that will probably change. 9 cases in my county so far, no idea how they got it, so prob all community transmission. 

Thomas Donohue > facw 03/23/2020 at 22:28

0

This. Still not finding the # of total tests given for NJ to be able to weigh the numbers, which are bad anyway. My friends Dad passed yesterday ...he wasn’t tested but was in a facility where a nother was confirmed positive, so likely the same cause.  A life well-lived regardless, so we toasted and mourned from 8 feet away tonight.  They are going to have to cycle through the family for the service, funeral director is being tough with 10 people max in the room at a time, so they are doing 8 and 8.   Bizarre times.

Thomas Donohue > facw 03/23/2020 at 22:31

1

Thanks!!!!! Even a higher % than I thought for NJ.

(excuse my enthusiasm for the awful numbers, but I want all the numbers.)

Stef Schrader > Dusty Ventures 03/26/2020 at 11:15

0

Huh. Texas is 45th, but then again, our healthcare is exceedingly garbage. Every healthcare expansion that gets passed, it seems like Texas resists it. I wonder how many untested cases are out there, frankly.

I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker > Dusty Ventures 03/26/2020 at 15:21

0

I haven’t seen a plot showing the rate of growth in the US. Have you seen one anywhere?

RPM esq. > Dusty Ventures 03/26/2020 at 19:23

0

Timing is a major factor in testing, too: when Washington’s outbreak started, the federal government forbid testing even if they had the lab capacity (not that they did anyway) , so there was more impediment to testing than just a shortage of tests, and a lot of less severe cases   have been confirmed in NY that never were in WA—people who have recovered by now . By the time New York’s outbreak started in earnest, the shortage of tests was a major problem but at least guidance had flipped to encourage testing likely cases. I would expect the death rate per confirmed case to go down over time not because the disease gets any less lethal but because a lot more borderline cases are tested and confirmed .

As a colleague in West Virginia put it to me ruefully: “ we’ll be the last to get it but it’ll still be here five years after everybody else has beaten it.” Looks like he’s right so far.

Dusty Ventures > I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker 03/26/2020 at 21:30

1

I haven't, but give me a sec and I'll plot it out

Dusty Ventures > I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker 03/26/2020 at 21:50

1

Welp.

Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo > Dusty Ventures 03/26/2020 at 22:18

1

Hey we didn’t make top 30!  #donttestdonttell

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Dusty Ventures 03/26/2020 at 23:52

2

Being in Western WA, it feels much greater than 1 in 3815. I personally know two people with confirmed cases of it (though I haven’t seen them in a while). Haven’t heard of more at work, so maybe our company making us work from home so early has avoided most of it. That would make it ~15 confirmed at work if it was distributed perfectly evenly, though I’d bet on double that. On the other hand, we  haven’t heard of any further confirmed cases from the SLT.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 03/27/2020 at 00:47

0

... and one of the dead in the count tomorrow will be one of the people I know. He died tonight around 8P.

Dusty Ventures > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 03/27/2020 at 06:38

0

As of last night Washington is 1 in 2,375

I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker > Dusty Ventures 03/27/2020 at 07:02

0

Is that dataset in your sheet?

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Dusty Ventures 03/27/2020 at 08:47

1

these numbers are as much a representation of how much each state is testing as they are about the number of actual cases present

This. Looking at deaths per capita is probably a much more accurate measure of how widespread the infection is. If you assume a 1% death rate (South Korea is currently at 1.5% and they have been one of the best countries with testing on a per capita basis) you can multiply that number by 100 to know how many people were infected as of 2-3 weeks ago.

So take New York....with 157 deaths that means as of 2-3 weeks ago 15,700 people were infected. Even New York isn’t testing nearly enough to stop it at this point.

Dusty Ventures > I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker 03/27/2020 at 09:39

1

Yes. I created a second page, you should see the tab for it at the bottom

Dusty Ventures > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s 03/27/2020 at 09:42

1

New York’s getting close though. As of yesterday 1 out of every 160 residents had been tested.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > jimz 03/27/2020 at 09:52

0

Considering over half of New York state’s population lives in the NYC area that makes sense even not factoring in the population density.

functionoverfashion > Dusty Ventures 03/27/2020 at 10:03

0

Another interesting site, if you haven’t been there, though I suspect you have: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

B/Xmrrmvr > Dusty Ventures 03/27/2020 at 16:35

0

I’m guessing our reliance on Mass Transit compared to LA is playing a huge factor into this. This is a subway platform this morning.

Dusty Ventures > functionoverfashion 03/28/2020 at 14:44

0

Yep, that's what I've been using to maintain my spreadsheet

David E. Davis > B/Xmrrmvr 04/01/2020 at 18:26

0

BTW, you are correct on your assessment on my alter ego. 

Linda > Dusty Ventures 04/07/2020 at 19:16

0

But this doesn’t take into account that there are concentrated areas of California. My county has over 1200 for 2 million means 60 per 100k which is much higher than you rank CA. California is large but most cases are centered around Santa Clara and LA counties. So, figuring this out by counties might be interesting and  then saying which are the top counties in the country would be what I’m interested in. That would measure true demsity.

Dusty Ventures > Linda 04/07/2020 at 20:47

0

I have neither the time nor the data to break it down by county