More People in Cambria County Getting the Third Booster Shot than Are Getting the First Two Shots

This week, Cambria County reached the grim milestone of 19,000 corona virus cases and 500 deaths since the pandemic began.  Currently, the state has reported that 47.59% of the county's population (children included) has received the first two doses with the current 7 day average for the first two shots at 77.7 per day.  This 7 day average is virtually identical to the 7 day average for new cases which is 72.29 per day as can be seen in the graph above. The above graph is on the logarithmic scale. 

On August 13, the state started to report the number of individuals receiving the third booster shot.  The pink line on the graph above shows that the 7 day average for the 3rd booster has  reached 304.6 per day with a much steeper increase than for those receiving the first to shots.  

It seems likely that those receiving the 3rd shot are many of the same individuals who received the first two in the early days of the vaccine rollout back in January.  Back then there was a similar steep increase in the number of full vaccinations (yellow line) as is seen now with the third booster (pink line).  This is seen in the above graph showing cumulative cases and vaccinations.  There are almost as many 3rd boosters as there are those who received the first shot.  

The nightmare scenario (as I stated before) is that a variant of the virus evolves that is resistant to the vaccine.  In this case we would be back to square one with masks and social distancing.  It took 184 years after Edward Jenner (for whom the town of Jennerstown, PA is named) created the smallpox vaccine for it to eradicate the disease.  How long will it take us?

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100 Books Sold and Rosie's Bookapalooza on October 22-24

After a successful book signing at IUP's homecoming two weeks ago, I reached 100 sales of my book Wuthering Depths in Johnstown: By the Numbers.  This weekend coming up I will be selling my book at Rosie's Bookapalooza this weekend at the Community Arts Center of Cambria County.  It will run from Friday Oct. 22 from 10am-5pm to Sat, Oct 23 and Sun, Oct 24 from 10am-3pm.  Five other local authors will be there.

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Columbus (or Indigenous People's) Day Reflections on COVID in PA

This weekend, the State of Pennsylvania only released case and hospitalization numbers, not death and vaccination numbers.  I assume that this is because of the Columbus (or Indigenous People's) Day is a state holiday.  This provides an opportunity to reflect on the state of the corona virus pandemic.  

The state has started to provide numbers of child cases each week.  This is in response to all of the controversy over mask mandates in schools.  Above are the numbers for Cambria County for the school year for the 0-4 age group (blue line) and the 5-18 age group (red line).  The graph is on the logarithmic scale to make it easier to see changes in both groups.  The trendlines are linear but are not straight because of the logarithmic scale and account for more than 95% of the variability for both age groups.

The elderly are still the most vulnerable to the virus as there are a total of 8 deaths in PA for ages 0-18 out of 29,907 total so far while 85.2% of total deaths are age 65 and older in PA.  Cases are more prevalent in age groups from 20-59 years old as seen in the graphs above.  

For gender, there are more cases among women but men are 17% more likely to die from the disease.  Race is not reported for 28% of cases but it is for all deaths.  The population adjusted mortality rate is lowest for Asian Americans in PA at 88.16 deaths/100,000 followed by Hispanics at 123.58/100,000.  African American and Caucasian rates are virtually equal at 228.13/100,000 and 234.44.100,000 respectively.  Individuals in multiple or other racial/ethnic groups have the highest mortality rate at 998.87/100,000.  

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COVID Deaths Rising in Cambria County and my 11th Anniversary Post.

The 11th anniversary of this blog has snuck up on me with all my other tasks in life.  I have still been tracking the coronavirus numbers in Cambria County with alarm.  The pandemic has preoccupied my posts since the first case was reported here on March 23, 2020 so I thought I would take a look at how it has impacted the blog.  First however I will look at the recent rise in cases and deaths.

  

The seven day average for new cases in the county rose from 0.71 per day on July 10 to 78 per day today, a 110 fold increase.  Until yesterday the deaths rose to a lesser extent.  There was a stretch from July 1 until August 10 where no deaths were reported.  Since then there were 27 deaths reported with 9 of them reported in the last 2 days.  

The county now ranks 8th in PA in cumulative case mortality at 2.71%.  It ranks 6th in population adjusted mortality, and 7th in population adjusted cases.

The 7 day average for deaths on July 10 was 0 per day.  Today it is 1.78 per day, about an 18 fold increase.  With the third booster shot along with the first 2 shots being given to the most vulnerable populations, the mortality rate is unlikely to reach the same terrible levels that it reached last winter.  Clearly many of the recent deaths were preventable.

I am now going off on a tangent for my anniversary post to look at what impact the pandemic has had on my blog.  Above is a screenshot of the google analytics page for traffic to this page.  The graph shows the period from when the first case was reported until today (blue line) and the preceding period (orange line) for every month.  Generally we see greater traffic for every month of the period of the pandemic. 

We see that the number of users increased by 54% and the number of new users increased by 52%.  The number of returning users (as a percentage of total users) increased from 5.6% before the first case to 12.3% after.  The number of pageviews increased by 103% while the pages per session increased by 23%.  The bounce rate decreased by 35% which means that fewer users were not interacting with the page.  The average session duration did decrease from 42 seconds before the pandemic to 25 seconds during.

I am happy to disseminate information about the difficulties that Cambria County faces.  I wish I had better news to give.  I will continue to sound the alarm.

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My Presentation at the Writers Association of Northern Appalachia and the Upcoming Festival of Books in the Alleghenies

 

Hi all, I know that I have been away. I had my presentation at the virtual Writers Association of Northern Appalachia last Saturday.  You can see it above.  Also, this Saturday, Sept.18, I will be at the Festival of Books in the Alleghenies in Ebensburg, PA with 40 other local authors from many genres.  There will be something for everyone.  Come on down!!

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Jay Wiedwald's Graphs on "Johnstown" and "Halo" Counties and Coronavirus

 

A follower of my blog named Jay Wiedwald shared some graphs showing how the counties immediately surrounding Cambria have been adversely affected by corona virus.  Jay is a former resident of Johnstown who lived in Moxham.  He includes Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Indiana, and Somerset counties as Johnstown and the surrounding counties ad "Halo" counties.  

In the graph that he created above, he computed the excess death rates from coronavirus for the "Johnstown" Counties, the "Halo" Counties, and Pennsylvania overall.  Excess death rates compared death rates for last fall and winter to death rates from previous years on the same day.  It shows that the Johnstown Counties had higher death rates after the Trump rally on October 13 compared to PA and the "halo" counties.

The graph above also shows a steady increase in case mortality rates for Cambria County after the Trump rally indicated by the yellow dot.  These are changes in the cumulative rates since the beginning of the pandemic.  Currently Cambria's rate (2.89%) is 33% higher that Pennsylvania's and 77% higher than the U.S. case mortality rate.  Recently the rates for Cambria, PA and the U.S. have declined due to the number of cases rising faster than the number of deaths.  The decline for PA and the U.S. has been steeper than Cambria's.

The table below summarizes the "Johnstown" and "Halo" counties for COVID mortality as of this writing.  I only have date for the PA 'Halo' counties. The 'Johnstown' counties indeed do have higher case and population adjusted mortality than PA or the "Halo" counties.  The "Halo" counties have a slightly lower case mortality rate than PA (2.07% for halo vs. 2.17% for PA) but the population adjusted rate is slightly higher for PA (222.60 for halo vs. 221.15 for PA).  The "Johnstown" counties have a 28% higher case mortality rate (2.78% for 'Johnstown' vs. 2.17% for PA) a 33% higher population adjusted mortality rate 293.6 for 'Johnstown' vs. 221.25 for PA.

Thank you Jay for Bringing this to my attention.  

Johnstown Counties	Cases	Deaths	Case mortality	Population	Deaths/100000
Bedford	5,045	144	2.85%	47,888	300.70
Blair	14,126	346	2.45%	121,829	284.00
Cambria	15,570	449	2.88%	130,192	344.88
Indiana	6,928	184	2.66%	84,073	218.86
Somerset	6,561	220	3.35%	73,447	299.54
Total 'Johnstown' Counties	48,230	1,343	2.78%	457,429	293.60
PA	1,308,284	28,325	2.17%	12,801,989	221.25
Halo Counties	Cases	Deaths	Case mortality	Population	Deaths/100000
Armstrong	6,434	151	2.35%	64,735	233.26
Centre	17,766	231	1.30%	162,385	142.25
Clearfield	9,264	166	1.79%	79,255	209.45
Fayette	14,231	335	2.35%	129,274	259.14
Franklin	16,925	381	2.25%	155,027	245.76
Fulton	1,513	18	1.19%	14,530	123.88
Huntingdon	5,502	137	2.49%	45,144	303.47
Jefferson	3,568	100	2.80%	43,425	230.28
Westmoreland	36,940	802	2.17%	348,899	229.87
Total ‘Halo’ Counties	112,143	2,321	2.07%	1,042,674	222.60
PA	1,308,284	28,325	2.17%	12,801,989	221.25

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