Covid-19 in Saint Charles County - Graphs

Below is a collection of graphs that I have created to show several different data points that I find helpful in tracking this disease in the county. You can read some of my notes about the data in these charts here.

Covid-19 Data Issues in Saint Charles County

May 22 Update:
I reached out to the County Health Department about this discrepancy and received the following reply/explanation:

The County’s health and information systems departments did switch reporting systems recently and noticed an error in the presentation of reported numbers. This caused the issue you note, and this was corrected as soon as possible.

I am not sure if the switch refers to the update to the PowerBI dashboard or if it refers to the actual source they are collecting the data from. I have not nioticed any updates the the actual layout or content of the dashboard, so i assume it is the data source. If the change in source resulted in a greater than 5% negative change in reported cases, then there seems to be valid reason for concern with the validity of the numbers that have been previously reported.

---

Original post:
I have been tracking the spread of Covid-19 in St. Charles County since the day the first case was announced. For several weeks, the County only had a table of current data on the site, so I was manually tracking daily case totals in a spreadsheet in order to see the trends. Finally, the County utilized PowerBI to provide some graphs of the data in a dashboard format. However, the County had not created some of the graphs that I thought helped better tell the story, so I continue to input and update daily new cases and deaths into my spreadsheet, all based on the published County data.

Over the course of this pandemic, firm numbers regarding positive cases, and even deaths, have been hard to establish. For Saint Charles County, the tale is no different. Most days, I have to scroll back though the previous days and update a few up or down by 1 or 2 cases. Typically, most of the changes occur to dates within the past 14 days, which makes sense, as this is within the window of symptoms presenting and test results being obtained. However, over the past week, I have noticed that the numbers are changing on dates much further back in time. 

Active Cases of Covid-19 in St. Charles County

Currently, the County website continues to show cumulative case numbers and does not show active case numbers. I have been tracking this data for over a month and present the below for reference.

Updated 06MAY20

Current Cumulative Cases: 637

Current Active Cases: 126

You can view the entire collection of my graphs that are updated regularly here.

Covid-19 Graph Notes

I have published some of the charts that I have created about Covid-19 in St. Charles County, MO. level data. Below are a couple of notes about how I arrived at some of my data points.

Notes:

• I have utilized the daily death total that I have been tracking on my own, as the county still does not publish them in a table at the daily level. 
• Due to the unavailability of the Recovery data at the county level, I have assumed the standard 14 day recovery window for all cases. I realize that this is variable, but for consistency sake and trend analysis, I felt like this data point was useful.
• I have calculated the number of Active Cases as follows:
• Active Cases = Yesterday's Active Cases + Today's New Cases - Today's Deaths - 14 Day Prior Daily Delta (Defined : Daily New Cases - Daily Deaths Announced)  

On the Fiscal Cliff

Thomas Sowell expresses his thoughts about the Fiscal Cliff, and these portions echo exactly what I think and feel:

First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on "the rich," even if that is done it will scarcely make a dent in the government's financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top two percent will not get enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days.

No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The Obama administration has done so every single year.

Referring to the Federal Reserve System's creation of hundreds of billions of new dollars out of thin air as "quantitative easing" makes it seem as if this is some soothing and esoteric process, rather than amounting essentially to nothing more than printing more money.
Debasing the value of money by creating more of it is nothing new or esoteric. Irresponsible governments have done this, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years.
It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

But it is not the same politically, so long as gullible people don't look beyond words to the reality that inflation taxes everybody, the poorest as well as the richest.

And there are these nuggets from Part 2:

A key lie that has been repeated over and over, largely unanswered, is that President Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" cost the government so much lost tax revenue that this added to the budget deficit-- so that the government cannot afford to allow the cost of letting the Bush tax rates continue for "the rich."

What is remarkable is how easy it is to show how completely false Obama's argument is.

What both the statistical tables in the "Economic Report of the President" and the graphs in Investor's Business Daily show is that (1) tax revenues went up-- not down-- after tax rates were cut during the Bush administration, and (2) the budget deficit declined, year after year, after the cut in tax rates that have been blamed by Obama for increasing the deficit.  

And here are the table and images referred to above:

Albert Pujols - The Choice

On January 6, 2012, I posted this status update:

Albert Pujols is a generous man. I pray that God uses him powerfully in California, as He is still doing in St. Louis. http://cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2012/01/06/dnt-mo-pujols-surprise-gift.ktvi.html

My sentiments toward that end have not changed. However, reading the following from Albert today kind of altered how I view him:

Pujols says his preference was to stay a Cardinal for the rest of his career, envisioning the day he would be revered in the city, just as Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock and Red Schoendienst were. He would have his number retired and have a statue erected outside Busch Stadium along with the other greats.   (Source: USA Today)

Albert Pujols was already revered in St. Louis. He was a living legend, with nothing but further respect and support to gain as the years ticked passed towards his retirement. He could have coasted into the Hall of Fame on his first ballot, wearing the Cardinals hat that gave him a chance to play, prove himself and become one of the best players in history. He could have spent his entire career with the organization and town that held their breath every time he winced or appeared even slightly injured. He could have been the shining example of how a player can stick with a club that may not be the most glamorous, or have the largest payroll, but is dedicated to winning and representing their city and fans well.

So much could have been different.

I'm not saying that Albert Pujols should have turned down the Angels offer. He is a professional athlete and if he wants to maximize his earning based on his abilities and skills, then more power to him. He has every right to make the decision he made. I'm praying that God uses him to dramatically impact his new hometown.

I don't think the Cardinals should have paid him anything near that contract. It wasn't in the organization's best interest long-term. Did they want Albert to retire a Cardinal? You bet. Could they compete with the big money that was thrown at him from the West Coast? Absolutely not.

Sometimes the numbers just don't compare well, and it appears that this is one of those instances where the disparity between dollars and years in the contract offered were apparently too large to overcome for a smaller ball club. The Cardinals made their stand. The Angels made their offer. Albert made his choice.

And I guess that is what bothers me about this statement in this article. St. Louis did not drive Albert Pujols away. The Cardinals didn't ride him out of town on a rail. It's not as if the extremely loyal fan base of the St. Louis Cardinals collectively removed their numerous Pujols jerseys, set fire to them at first base in Busch Stadium and then march down to the Mississippi River and chucked them in.

I'm pretty sure that Bob Gibson, Lou Brock and Red Schoendienst, along with numerous other former Cardinals all wanted to see Albert remain a Cardinal. In fact, Stan Musial, the man that is, according to Albert Pujols, the only player worthy to be called "The Man" went to the internet to do his part to get Albert to stay in St. Louis.

If Albert Pujols wanted to remain a Cardinal for life, he could have made that happen.

If Albert wanted a statue next to the greats of Cardinal nation, he could have made that happen.

If Albert wanted to see his number 5 retired at Busch Stadium, he just had to keep playing ball.

If Albert wanted to be revered as a Cardinal, then all he had to do was stay in town.

But he didn't choose that for himself.

It was all right there for the taking.

If that was his dream, if that was his hope, then I'm afraid he gave it up for some numbers that the dedicated, hard working, baseball loving, intelligent St. Louis Cardinal fans recognize as detrimental to the team's future.

Albert made his choice. Now he has to work really hard at making that dream happen over the waning years of his career as an Angel. Something tells me that the people of California may have other stars to follow when Albert's productivity starts to decline.

I wish him well, but I wish he would stop talking about how desperately he dreamed of staying a Cardinal for life. You had that choice Albert, and you chose to move on.

And now, so shall we.

Why I Think America Is In Deep Trouble

Last week I was thinking about all of the hype surrounding the debt-ceiling when it occurred to me that I haven't check the status of the Federal Reserve's Monetary Base lately. What follows is a lengthy post where I try to recapture all of my thoughts on this and various topics that I have written about over the course of the past few years.

I started tracking the Monetary Base prior to attending the April 15, 2009 Tea Party in downtown St. Louis, after which I posted my reasons for attending the tea party event. Included in that post was a graph showing the National Debt Per Capita and the Adjusted Monetary Base.

Mathemagic

Arthur Benjamin gives an amazing exhibition..