25 Comments

Super appreciated! It has been harder and harder to get a sense of what’s actually happening in real time, so this is fantastic.

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We made it because we need it! Glad it’s useful

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Very cool - a few questions:

1) Is the data for total beds actual, estimates, or reported?

2) I was under the impression the US trends to have ~970K beds, which why I was surprised the data goes as high as 821K and as low as 690K - would be interested in an essay to explain the nuts and bolts behind why there are so few staffed beds, how and why that number has steadily decreased over the last 50 years (IIRC we had ~2 milllion beds in the 70's with a smaller population) - I have a good idea of the reasons (efficiency, better triage, more support sites to delegate) but would enjoy a deep dive at some point.

3) May be good to have another version of the first chart which just breaks out the ICU information since the lines are scaled against the total beds so harder to see trends (the "Keep Only" and "exclude" options weren't changing the chart for me)

4) A repeat of the "Deaths" graph would be useful with total death stacked against Covid Deaths

5) Maybe it's there and I didn't see it, but is there a way to see the source data links?

6) Can you give an explainer on what the wastewater data actually shows us? What does "sum of percentile of Maximum" mean? Is 100% of all wastewater across the country sampled? What can this data tell us?

Great work

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Hey Michael. Great q's.

For point #1-2 this has been an "issue" for a long time that we have directly brought up the chain at HHS and CDC. Last I checked, it was "reported" beds. But reported CAN include beds that you and I might not call a bed. For example, an extra bed in a literal hallway might count as 1 bed, just as a bed in a cardiac telemetry unit would count. We've asked that the govt require hospitals to give two or three numbers; 1) actual regular staffed beds 2) how many that could increase if they maxed our their staffing. 3) how many they could flex up to in a real disaster situation (ie. turning the chapel into series of dorms). As of now, the reporting is inconsistent along these lines.

point 3: I think we will try that!

point 4: we'll fiddle with things like this.

point 5: yeah we can link to them. So far it's just 2 or 3 sources, but we may add more.

point 6: 100% is the max ever recorded in any jurisdiction in that state. We'll add some explanations on all the metrics. We just launched with minimum viable product :)

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Thank you so much for the feedback. Sadly my wife was diagnosed with peritoneal carcinomatosis this past April (I blame her working in Cath Lab for decade+ as vasc surgeon, but she blame crohns disease) so we have been in-and-out of various hospitals lately and it's surprising to me how fluid the "beds" seem to be (Hospitals: "we have no beds - no wait, we found a bed we can put you in") so I realize the numbers are far more variable than you might think. Great dashboard though, thanks

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Sorry to hear about the ordeal.

Yes we asked HHS and CDC to look into requiring hospitals to give better data. Not much movement now. But perhaps "next" time, that'll happen.

Of course a lot of times, what happens is that someone who is going to be discharged from an occupied hospital bed in 4 hours from can actually be discharged in 2 hours, if the stars align (and people hustle to make it happen). And so, voila, a bed magically materializes...

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sources now posted!

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Not seeing them - another commentor in most recent post (8/28 edition) was asking too and I can't seem to navigate to them

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You said it, key CV 19 metrics in one (1) place. Thank you Bengy & Jeremy!

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🙌

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Thank you!!!!

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Happy to do it:) Benjy rocked it.

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Great idea — and thank you!

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This is really really wonderful. Thank you so much for putting this together and sharing it with the world. You guys rock!

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🙌

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Excellent! Thank you! Love this!

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Thank you for amplifying!

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So incredibly appreciate this. For non scientist/doctor humans it has been virtually impossible to decipher what is going on! Do we need to sign up on Tableau to find this when we need to check?

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Hi! I think you do not need to sign up for Tableau. Just click it anytime and it should be available. If that's not the case, Let me know!

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Thank you will do! Tell Benji we are grateful for him too!

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He reads these :) but I’ll reiterate!

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Can you share the source of the data you're graphing? I am particularly interested in the death count because that is very hard to find. The CDC stopped reporting it after the Emergency Order ended. It supposedly was available on another data base (hard to find and access), but that info lags a lot because current periods don't reflect delayed reporting death certificates. How are dealing with that problem of "current time" reporting? Again, this is a great idea! Thanks.

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yes we'll link the data.

right now, we can't adjust for current time / lag. But in the past, we've done that on other projects. It's just...tricky...

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Thank you. This is the sort of COVID -19 information resource that is needed but very difficult to find!

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Many thanks!!! I'm a bit confused about the legend for the bottom graphs. The state list includes Houston!

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