July 23, 2020 - Painful News
Painful News
July 23, 2020
It is really, really painful to write this post today. After two days of lower case counts in the range of 1,450, I wanted to cry when I saw today’s statewide number - 2,399 new cases (incl. 116 probables). This tops the previous daily record of 2,212, set two weeks ago. There were also 33 deaths (including one probable), which is well above the 7-day average of 20 deaths per day.
This latest spike is particularly disappointing because it comes one week after July 16, the effective date of Gov. Ivey’s “mandatory” mask order (imho, mandatory in name only). We can only hope that today’s number is a fluke and it’s too early to measure the effectiveness of the mask order.
It’s clear this spike is not caused by more testing - today’s reported 9,921 daily tests is only slightly higher than the 7-day average of 9,700. The all-important positivity rate - 24.18% for today - reflects rapidly accelerating community spread. Our 7-day average positivity rate also rose to 19.4%, which is higher than the rate recorded yesterday by every state in the country except Arizona and Nevada (by the way, for those who wonder why my positivity rates are a tick higher than those reported by BamaTracker, it’s because I count “probable” cases).
A review of the county-by-county data provides a window into what might be going on. Before today, Mobile County had recorded more than 200 cases only once (207 on July 10) - today its case count is 354. Before today, Baldwin County’s highest number was 127 (on July 18) - today its case count is 259. In other words, this explosion of cases seems to be confined to the Gulf coast - for instance, it is noteworthy that Escambia County (47), which borders Florida, set a new individual record and Houston County (52), which also borders Florida, nearly topped its prior record. On the other hand, Jefferson (277), Madison (145) and Montgomery (100) were all within their normal ranges for new cases.
Conclusion: we might be seeing a growing community spread from the July 4th beach holiday.
Here are the 14-day totals:
7/10 - 1,334
7/11 - 1,402
7/12 - 1,640
7/13 - 1,958
7/14 - 1,710
7/15 - 1,817
7/16 - 2,021
7/17 - 2,003
7/18 - 2,143
7/19 - 1,777
7/20 - 1,880
7/21 - 1,467
7/22 - 1,455
7/23 - 2,399
At the risk of sounding nasty and vindictive, I cannot resist pointing out that Blount County, whose Sheriff Moon proudly announced he would never enforce Gov. Ivey’s mask order, set its own new record for daily cases - 30.