It is exhausting and disheartening to watch the COVID-19 numbers of illness and deaths spin ever higher and too often faster and faster.
We have already commented that Louisiana’s Governor, following sound public health advice, invoked his considerable executive powers early and often. First state case: March 9. Multiple orders starting with Declaration of Public Health Emergency (March 11), school closures (March 13), culminating in Statewide Lockdown March 22. The lockdown has now been extended until April 30.
We have been waiting and hoping that stiff early measures would help spare Louisiana from a portion of the illness and death racing across the country while the current Administration has bumbled, fumbled and excused itself.
The data picture of COVID-19 in Louisiana has been a bleak one. We have been on a steeply rising epidemic curve with potentially overwhelming consequences for our medical system and thus for our citizens.
This information is complete as of April 4 at noon for Louisiana going back to literal Day 1 of the pandemic.
We now have 12,496 cases and 409 deaths in our state. There are 1,726 residents in hospital and 571 of our neighbors in critical condition on ventilators. That is the current tally.
What we crave is evidence that the scourge is moderating. That the epidemic curve is slowing, blunting and flattening here. It isn’t in our country as a whole. Tonight, we watch the obscene number of 312,000 cases and more than 8,500 dead in our country.
Meanwhile the utterly feckless and incompetent Carnival Barker is prancing and preening and spouting incoherent and dangerous nonsense, oblivious to the damage he leaves behind every time he opens his mouth on the subject.
In any case here are the updated graphs and charts for our own public health crisis in Louisiana. The primary data chart is given for the whole period through April 4, for just the month of March, for the last 7 days, and for the 10 days for which we have Parish level statistics involving Orleans and Jefferson Parishes (our most badly stricken areas), and for East Baton Rouge (our State Capital and my residence) where we have had an easier but still nasty time of it.
Our medical system is stressed to handle the load, but it is not overwhelmed at this point.
[Note: There was a DOH data reporting adjustment from twice daily to once a day at 12 PM starting on March 22. As a result, the data for three days (March 22, March 23, and March 24) are anomalous in timing until comparable 24-hour reporting periods was restored on March 25. Interpretations based only on these three days should be made cautiously.]
There are also two bar charts from March 29 and updated to April 4 presenting statewide new cases and total deaths for each day since the first recognized case on March 9.
Hope remains our currency informed by evidence and facts, not wild hunches and off-kilter personal beliefs. We could surely use better news to reinforce our joint social compact to stay at home and protect our neighbors and strangers alike.
And as a final illustrating graph, here is where some evidence now suggests that there is a muting or flattening of the rate of growth in deaths. No such moderation is seen in new case numbers yet, but the slowing of death rise is a powerful sign that we are not helpless at the mercy of this invisible evil. Social actions grip and take hold.
This is what flattening of the curve looks like, in real data, if the trend holds.
Even if our prayers and common public health actions are rewarded, there is still a heavy COVID-19 problem to bear. Flattening the curve still means there are more people to care for than the day before. It doesn’t signal the situation is significantly improved yet, only that it is not getting more and more dire by the day. But it also means we will be more likely to weather the epidemic storm intact, without suffering more fundamental damage to our medical, social, and economic systems.
There is no time for false hope this good turn would be a time to relax our current lockdown conditions. The stay at home order will need to remain in place for at least several more weeks (likely minimum through the middle of May) or else we will reignite the viral fire here. It means we have a measure of control over spread, when everyone does their job and plays their responsible part.
Fingers crossed, but Eyes Wide Open for Data.
Lax Controls, More Sickness. Simple, Simple.
History offers us many painful lessons. To show what happens when devil may care selfish attitudes prevail, here is a picture from Philadelphia in the teeth of the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic where locals played around and dismissed warnings. Not for the squeamish, but See the Open Graves and Stacks of Bodies in the Municipal Morgue.
This is not some long ago and old-fashioned situation impossible to imagine in our 21st Century America as it is Made Great by Trump.45 presiding. Here is today’s view of part of New York City. At least the bodies are hidden beneath canvas tents. How immensely civilized.
Last word is that the Pentagon will supply military issue body bags, and may provide refrigerated trucks for New York. They are easier to come by than the life-saving ventilators New York is fibbing about needing, according to Trump’s hyper-sensitive gut.
America, aren’t we just so lucky to have a True National Leader?
An unkind person might add with his Head Very Far up his Posterior.
