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You& #39;ve undoubtedly heard that "hospitalization rates are a lagging indicator," which is true. What that means is from the date you& #39;re infected it takes a few days for you to develop symptoms, then several days of feeling bad at home before you feel bad enough to go to the ER. /1
Because of that, if there& #39;s a day or event where a lot of people are exposed to (and infected with) COVID-19, then we should expect to see an increase in hospitalization rates roughly 2 weeks later, right? /2
Right. So, I used @pmonies excellent graph and added 2-week window overlays from Memorial Day & Independence Day. You can see that hospitalizations bottomed out around Memorial Day, and then 2 roughly weeks later, they begin to increase. /3
Without looking at the hard number it& #39;s hard to say exactly *how* quickly cases have been increasing, but just eyeballing the graph it appears to have not increased more since July 4th, at least not yet. (Of course, there is also a limit to hospital capacity. /4
My anecdotal observations (based entirely at Target & Lowe& #39;s on May, bc that& #39;s about the only places I& #39;ve gone) indicates that by July 4th there were more people wearing masks than in June. So maybe they saw the data and began to modify their behavior, who knows? /5
Clearly it wasn& #39;t everyone, of course, because hospitalizations continue to increase.
With mask requirements in place in most large cities in Oklahoma, we should expect no change for a few days, followed by a decrease in new cases, followed by a decrease in hospitalizations. /6
With mask requirements in place in most large cities in Oklahoma, we should expect no change for a few days, followed by a decrease in new cases, followed by a decrease in hospitalizations. /6
