Lost in the Fog

All models are wrong, but some are useful
~George E. P. Box

All models are stories. 

Is it our story that the pandemic is over? There's story that cases are down and symptoms are mild, so back to "normal". Is that reality? Does commonly available data tell a useful story? Can we build a useful model?

Since the start of the pandemic, I have been looking at the positive cases in our local five county NY Capital District area. As did the rest of the country, ee saw a big spike in cases due to the Omicron variant.

The data is from the NY Times. You can get the code here.

The data shows a slight uptick in positive cases in recent days. Do these numbers reflect the current state of positive cases in the area? Probably not. Given high vaccination rates, the availability of home tests, and the the fact that most cases have mild symptoms, it's unlikely that the data reflects reality. The linked article contains what to me is the most convincing evidence - a stark difference between randomly sampled cases in the UK and reported cases. It seems likely that a similar situation is occurring locally.

If we can't trust the case data, what is likely to be more trustworthy? Perhaps, hospitalizations.

The data for this plot is from the health.data.ny.gov. The code for both plots is available here.

We see a slight uptick in hospitalizations in Albany county. However, hospitalizations represent serious cases and if most symptoms are mild, the population seeking medical assistance requiring hospitalization will likely be a small percentage of the total cases. If a significant uptick in hospitalizations occurs, it may mean we are entering yet another new phase of the virus. Unfortunately, it may not indicate an increase in cases, only a change in the state of virud in ciculation.

In some locales, wastewater is being tested. This will give a useful measure of the presence of viral infections and trends in community infection, but it's unclear how to translate it to cases. The idea data collection method would be random community testing. Given the current political situation in the US, that's unlikely. Even if it occurred, political moderates and liberals would likely be willing to be tested. Conservatives would probably consider it an invasion and unnecessary. A regular test at each doctor's visit would be useful. The population would likely be older and more vulnerable. It would give useful information about those populations. Again. this is unlikely to happen. We're not exactly flying blind, but we're in dense fog.

Code for downloading data and producing plots is available on GitHub.