Oregon’s stunning COVID numbers

And why a surge in two weeks is a mathematical impossibility

April 8, 2020

This morning, Oregon’s only major newspaper, The Oregonian, ran a story with a headline sure to keep people hiding in their homes:

Oregon prepares for coronavirus surge: New online tool will help track its spread, direct sick to open hospital beds

In the article, writer Maxine Bernstein mentioned that the surge of COVID patients here in Oregon is expected to “reach its peak of cases around April 24 or 25” which would be 16 days from today.

What happened to logic?

I went to the gas station last night at 8:30pm here in Portland. The gas station is on a very busy street. The attendant told me I was his first customer since his shift started 30 minutes prior. We started talking, he told me he was worried about the surge. As I explained in my article last week, it’s mathematically impossible that the surge happens here in Oregon 16 days from now, and I will lay it out for you the way I laid it out for him:

Oregon went into “shelter at home” mode on March 23, based on an order from our Governor Kate Brown. Generally speaking, people who become infected with COVID-19 make it to the hospital (for the small minority of people who need to go to the hospital) 10-13 days AFTER they get infected with COVID-19. Since there is simply no doubt that Governor Brown’s shelter at home order has reduced the rate of transmission, that means the peak hospitalization time should be 10-13 days AFTER the shelter at home order was given, possibly sooner, but really no later. Why anyone with a brain would think the peak would happen one MONTH after a shelter at home order was given is beyond me, it simply makes no sense, because of the time between exposure and hospitalization for almost all cases.

The gas station attendant got it immediately. He felt relieved.

OHA Data

Every day, the Oregon Health Authority posts data about COVID-19 here in the state, and every day I’m stunned by what the data reveals that the press never seems to talk about. Here’s one chart you probably haven’t seen (I’ve added my own thoughts in the red box), this shows daily emergency room visits for all hospitals here in Oregon and the percentage of those visits (in blue) that are COVID-19 visits. You have to really squint to see the blue part (COVID-19 visits) because it’s tiny and shrinking.

Source: Oregon Health Authority, click to expand image

The argument I made in my previous post, that’s even more true today, is that all the numbers showing how hospitalizations (the key leading indicator of where we are in the cycle of COVID-19’s viral arc) were declining before Governor Brown’s March 23 order. I hope when you look at this chart my next point becomes even more obvious:

Knowing the shelter at home order happened on March 23, how in the hell can the surge take place in late April? It can’t, it already happened

The problem has always been the models, time for Governor Brown to think independently

This is probably going to shock you even more than what I just showed you. As I explained in my last post, the reason so many Governors locked down their states is because they were presented with data by the IHME that showed extreme death levels if lockdowns didn't happen. Frankly, if I’d been presented with the IHME’s data I probably would have locked down Oregon, too. Here’s the problem: their data has proven to be disastrously wrong, and has overestimated death and hospitalization rates by 5-10x, which means they have been off by roughly 500-1,000%, which basically means their data has been useless. The press has finally started talking about this incredible whiff by the IHME, even though it’s been clear for a couple of weeks.

Article posted last night in The Guardian, click image to read. — Article posted last night in *The Guardian*, click image to read.

The IHME keeps revising their numbers downward, so I'm not going to post their Oregon data from several weeks ago, I’m going to post what’s in their model right now, but I’m just not sure you’re ready to see it, because it’s going to make you sick to your stomach, so I will start with this little preamble first:

Do you know any restaurant owners or workers? I do. Their lives have been thrown into chaos, stress, and in many cases, despair. Do you know any dual-income households with special needs children? I do. Do you know any of those households that have lost a job or two? I do, and their future prospects and lives are very, very dark right now. Do you know any people who suffer from anxiety or depression and live alone? How are they holding up right now? Of course, I could go on, and many of you reading have friends or are living this nightmare right now. But, we are all doing this to save lives, right? So let’s be clear about what that means….

The IHME Data For Oregon: Mind-blowing

People mistakenly think our entire state is on lockdown and catapulting towards economic disaster in order to PREVENT people from EVER having COVID-19, and that’s simply untrue and unrealistic. The truth for any new virus is that most people will be exposed to it because, well, we live in a society. If your goal is to NEVER get COVID-19, you’d pretty much need to live on lockdown for the rest of your life. The ONLY reason for the lockdown is to manage the flow of people through our hospitals so that those who have acute symptoms will get the care they need to hopefully not die. That’s it, it’s that simple. We don’t want to overwhelm the hospital system at any one time.

So, you’re now being told by Oregon’s leaders and newspapers to expect the surge in 2 weeks and that your sacrifices are not in vain, so what does the model now say that Governor Brown and the OHA are using to stick with this lockdown recommendation? You have to see it to believe it! To be clear: the below image is the IHME’s model today just for the state of Oregon.

Source: IHME. Note: This model is dead wrong (our peak has passed) and still only shows less than 1/10th hospital utilization on peak day

I have used this article and my previous post to argue that any peak for COVID-19 has not only ALREADY HAPPENED, but it was actually happening before Governor Brown’s lockdown order of March 23rd. Moreover, even if you accept the highly faulty model that Governor Brown is using that has never been right, even on our worst day it shows that our hospitals will barely be stretched with a forecast usage of 8.6% of current capacity.

Remember the restaurant owners and workers I mentioned above? Think about their ruined lives and livelihoods for a moment, think about the data I just showed you, and then try to imagine what in the world Governor Brown was thinking when she made this decision just yesterday:

In Conclusion

COVID-19 is a serious illness for a very small subset of people exposed to the virus. In the real world, we can’t keep people from getting exposed to new viruses forever, but we can make sure they have the best chance for survival by having access to proper medical care. In Oregon, the natural arc of the COVID-19 virus was already on the decline before Governor Brown’s order on March 23rd that shut down our economy and cost hundreds of thousands of Oregonians their jobs. Now we see that even with the faulty models she’s using that have always overestimated the numbers, the surge in Oregon will be a non-event.

If you are going to do something as draconian as shut down an economy, you better be right, and you better have good data. Governor Brown has neither.

About Professor Hinkley:

I’m an over-educated Oregonian writing under a pen name because I want to stay employed. I’m sure you understand.

Addendum:

So this is an unprecedented situation, right? That’s how we are all justifying the draconian move ruining the lives of so many…this has never happened before, right? Hospitals don’t have surges and outbreaks? If you believe that. don’t read this, from the LA Times January 2020 (and, no, they didn’t lock down California for this):

Across the state, flu activity jumped in December and has stayed high into January, according to state data. Staff at Southern California hospitals say their emergency departments have been flooded since the holidays with patients complaining of fever, headaches, sore throats and other flu symptoms.
Hospitals trying to manage overcrowding have asked patients not to come to the emergency room unless absolutely necessary and instead go to urgent care centers. At Loma Linda Medical Center in San Bernardino, staff erected a massive tent in the parking lot to triage the influx of flu patients.

April 9th Update:

The giant whiff by the IHME—the source of the scary numbers that forced many Governors to choose to ruin their economies—are finally starting to come under fire in the mainstream press, although its oddly being covered much more by publications with a conservative bent. Why is truth partisan?

Read:

4/9/20: National Review: COVID-19 Projection Models Are Proving to Be Unreliable

From the article:

To describe as stunning the collapse of a key model the government has used to alarm the nation about the catastrophic threat of the coronavirus would not do this development justice.
In a space of just six days starting April 2, two revisions (on April 5 and 8) have utterly discredited the model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. I wrote about the IHME’s modeling at National Review on Monday, the day after the first revision — which was dramatic, but pales in comparison to Wednesday’s reassessment. This was not immediately apparent because the latest revision (April 8) did not include a side-by-side comparison, as did the April 5 revision. Perusal of the new data, however, is staggering, as is what it says about government predictions we were hearing just days ago about the likelihood of 100,000 deaths, with as many as 240,000 a real possibility.

Tucker Carlson: We must ask the experts how they screwed up the coronavirus models so badly