As the Covid numbers begin to drop across the country, I was curious what a timeline for actual reopening may look like. So I compiled a list of all the Covid Lockdown stages and various restriction orders that came out of Rhode Island. I then matched them up with the graphs I complied from all my data.
First we have the Positive Test Percentage graph. This graph shows the Percentage of Positive tests in all tests given. Please note that I have offset the percentages to the dates, meaning: The percentage at each Restriction update is the percentage of the week leading up to that date. This visualizes what the condition of the state was in that lead to the decision of each restriction update.
Next we have Total Hospitalizations. This is a pretty important graph as it shows the growth in which that amount of people are being admitted to the hospital for Covid. The Blue line is the Total number at that given date and the Red line is the growth number between restriction updates. Each date at the bottom is a date in which a Restriction update was released.
Finally we have the Estimated Current Hospitalizations graph. This one is a less reliable because the Hospitalization numbers are an estimate. I generated the graph by using only the new Hospitalizations for the last two-three weeks. I figured the current widely agreed recovery timeline for the virus is two-to-three weeks. That being said, this doesn’t count for any long term medical attention such as ventilators, so these numbers could be off.
Overall:
Looking at all graphs we see a point in time where Covid seemed to have slowed down and then ramped back up. The graphs seem to point at the end of September / beginning of October, around the announcement of the state reducing gatherings from 25 to 15. “Covid Fatigue” and then the beginning of the Holiday season (starting with the notorious Halloween), set off a chain reaction that spiked cases and hospitalization for months. No further restriction could stop the rise in cases.
But that’s not to say those restrictions didn’t help keep the numbers where they were and not spiking even higher. The restrictions were like lightly using the brakes when you drive downhill: you aren’t going to come to a full stop right away, but you also aren’t going to gain more speed.
Furthermore, the controversial “Pause” was an interesting event. The “Pause” was enacted on November 30th, 2020 and ended on December 21st, 2020 and was designed to slow Covid Spread and to help flatten the curve of hospitalizations. But according to all the charts, it didn’t have a huge effect. Positive Test results went down barely half a percent. And then immediately shot back up past the point they were at before the “Pause”, then dropping continuously. Estimated Current Hospitalizations kept shooting upward, then the “Pause” ended at the first major drop. Which again, the hospitalizations jumped up again immediately and yo-yoed for a few weeks after. Even looking at Total Hospitalizations, the numbers jumped after the “Pause” was enacted and even seem to slow down their climb after it ends.
That being said, the Spread Rates for the weeks during the “Pause” were lower than previous weeks. But a Spread Rate is an indicator of 1:1 spread from each week. So when numbers were already at 8902 the week of 11/30, a Spread Rate of 0.96 the next week still resulted in over 8K new cases.
Conclusion:
As the state reacted to small spikes and began to further restrictions, the cases kept climbing. The holidays were always going to be “Super Spreading” events, there is no argument there. But it appears that the restrictions didn’t help much in preventing them. Maybe just curbing them.
I for one believe Covid is real and a threat to those that are not healthy. That is why I look at the data. The data, I have found, paints a very clear picture of the virus and what is happening in each state and city. There are people who tell me that the sources I use (NYT, The Atlantic, Google) are all Left-Biased and that the sources report higher numbers than are real to help push a Liberal agenda. But if that were true, then the graphs would show me that the Rhode Island (a very Blue state) restrictions actual worked at stopping Covid. Instead it shows me the State struggling to keep up with the virus and human nature. It shows me that no one restriction was overly helpful in stopping anything. The only time that Covid slowed down was once all the social Holidays ended. In short, the virus stopped spreading because people didn’t have a reason to spread it.