Each week, I hear opinions and ”facts” from various acquaintances on second waves, the efficacy in masks preventing spread of Covid, on the importance of vaccine development, and on just about everything else Covid.
I typically begin to respond with true facts, you know, data from trustworthy sources.
One “fact” I heard was that Jersey was going through a second wave and that more positive cases were being found.
If Jersey is experiencing a second wave, I missed it and so has the CDC, Saint Barnabas, RWJBarnabas Health, and every Jersey hospital. Jersey was hit hard from mid-March to early-May. Since early-May, we have seen very few serious cases. That trend, fortunately, continues.
Testing wise, Jersey continues to have a low positive rate. For example, from August 2nd – 17th, RWJBarnabas Health tested 30,738 healthcare-workers (HCWs) and employees and found on 129 positives or 0.42%. The medical staff actually had a lower rate = 0.33%.
The SwabMob stopped testing, in large part, because the positivity rate was exceedingly low. We didn’t help end the pandemic in Jersey, we did, however, help prove it had it gone.
As I predicted…ok, I anticipated or suggested might occur (I don’t want to predict anything with this virus), the trend of an 8 – 10 week outbreak, as experienced here in Jersey and in NYC, continues to play out in other states, including Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina and Texas. As shown in the graphs below, each of these states experienced their first wave starting in June or so and now is winding down.
The fact that each state goes through a similar first wave followed by dramatic decline in new, daily cases strongly suggest, o.k. proves, that this pattern is natural and humans have nothing to do with it. These state-by-state outbreaks also suggest, o.k., prove that the impact of masks on the spread of Covid must be pretty damn small.
I will unmask the data behind the masks in a future post, but be re-assured the data are, at best, weak and are observational. During the Covid-19 pandemic, data from observational trials have been treated extremely variably. It is absurd and nonsensical that data from some observational trials are accepted without critique and data from other observational trials are never accepted.
Graphs of the Daily New Cases in NY, Jersey, Arizona, California, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas.
