Indiana COVID-19 update: 1 October 2021

Well, here we are again. Indiana’s numbers have been consistently trending downward. I feel comfortable saying we’ve passed the delta peak. The “good” news is that given recent infections—plus people who have been vaccinated—winter will be less peak and more plateau. Let’s look at some graphs from my dashboard.

Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths

The rate of change in cases stopped increasing in early August. By early September, they were dropping week-over-week. With school starting and then Labor Day, there was a potential for a big increase. Thankfully, we did not see that. Even more thankfully, kids 5–11 may be able to get their first shots before October.

Week-over-week (blue) and week-over-two-week (red) differences in new COVID-19 cases

Hospitalizations have been falling steadily in the past few weeks. If the trend holds, we may be below 2,000 by Monday. That would be the first time since August 23. ICU beds and ventilator usage peaked around September 13. Interestingly, the ventilator usage percentage then was higher than during the worst part of last winter. I’m not sure if that’s due to a reduction in capacity or what.

Day-over-day (blue) and week-over-week (red) changes in hospitalizations

Deaths have also peaked. As of right now, it appears that the peak was September 15. However, the lag in reports seems to have increased, so it’s possible that date will shift forward a bit. In any case, the precipitous drop has become less precipitous. The peak daily death toll is near what we saw in spring 2020. I shudder to think how bad things would have been had the delta variant arrived pre-vaccine.

Daily COVID-19 deaths on a logarithmic scale.

The future

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model has varied a lot in the last month or so. The September 1 model run seems to have captured the increase the best, although it had a stronger and later peak than what is apparently the case. Although the state hasn’t made any changes, I’ve observed more people wearing masks and the state has seen an increase in vaccination. The earlier models took a pessimistic view of behavior, which may explain the difference.

Policy

The state has changed to updating its dashboard at 5pm instead of noon. This is ostensibly to allow more time for quality control and to catch missing data. Cynically, I think it’s because they’d been hours late regularly and decided to lean into it. The updates have been less reliable, too.

Given that the briefings are now being done irregularly and without the governor present, I must stick with my conclusion that he has abdicated any claim of leadership. The state seems to have no desire to give a damn about COVID-19.

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