Skip to main content

Was there a Thanksgiving Bump?

Wholesome holiday or superspreader supper? Photo from Pixabay.

Doomers warned of a Thanksgiving bump in COVID cases. "A surge upon surge," warned Fauci; "assume that you were exposed and you became infected," advised Birx. Some states instituted restrictions: New Mexico issued a stay-at-home order; Washington state banned indoor restaurant service for a month; Michigan banned indoor dining service for three weeks. North Dakota and Iowa, meanwhile, finally told people to wear face coverings if they're out in public. South Dakota stayed its libertarian course.

What were the effects of these various orders, or lack of them? The US has seen increasing COVID deaths and hospitalizations over the past few weeks. Thanksgiving was Thursday, November 26; it's now three weeks later. Was it due to Thanksgiving gatherings? Charts below are from CovidTracking.com, accessed December 16.

Thanksgiving bump?

Well, it doesn't look like a bump, but a trend that started around October. The trend must be because of those do-little governors in places like Iowa and the Dakotas...right?

Iowa

North Dakota

South Dakota

Clearly, these states aren't contributing to the rise in hospitalizations, and North Dakota and Iowa show what might be a bump in deaths despite their recent mask orders. South Dakota, with no COVID restrictions for Thanksgiving, saw deaths level off.

Are things better where governors banned dining service or ordered citizens to stay at home?

Washington state: ban on indoor dining service for a month.

New Mexico: Stay-at-home order.
Michigan: Ban on indoor dining service for three weeks. (*Various bans have been widely resisted and unenforced in some areas.)

To be fair to Washington, Michigan and New Mexico, Oklahoma and Tennessee, which didn't order any particular Thanksgiving restrictions, have graphs that look very much like those states. 

“Oklahomans should be with their loved ones over Thanksgiving.”

Republican Gov. Bill Lee said he has no plans to impose restrictions, though he would “encourage Tennesseans to think hard” about celebrating together.

As far as I can tell from looking at the most and least regulated states, Thanksgiving restrictions had no effect on death or hospitalization trends--unless it's that several places saw a decline in hospitalizations after Thanksgiving, though I don't know if it's causal or the normal course of the pandemic. 

*****

Has being free of government restrictions been the best way to go? It's not clear. North and South Dakota, two of the least COVID-regulated states, have among the highest rates of excess deaths so far--but they're immediately followed by Michigan, whose governor has tried to impose strict regulations. Counties whose sheriffs refused to enforce the emergency orders (Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee and Mason) have seen 53 deaths out of the state's 12,074. Michigan's dashboard doesn't show deaths per capita by county, but does show Detroit City and a few surrounding counties (over 200 miles from those mentioned above) accounting for two-thirds of COVID deaths. Pennsylvania, where police ticketed a woman early this year simply for driving her car, is between freer Florida and Texas.

Excess deaths per million, 2/1/20 to present. Created with info from the CDC and US Census population numbers. Click to enlarge.

The doomers might make a case that lack of regulation has caused a high excess death rate in some places. But I don't see any sign that canceling Christmas is going to alter any trends. 
Labels:

Comments

Lori Miller said…
Looks like Dr. Birx didn't take her own advice to limit Thanksgiving to your immediate household. https://www.wishtv.com/news/coronavirus/birx-travels-family-visits-highlight-pandemic-safety-perils/
December 21, 2020
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here .  * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...
1 comment
Read more

Fermented bread and butter pickle recipe ft. L. Plantarum

After Dr. Davis said the other night that  L. plantarum  may reduce some of the effects of the herbicide glyphosate (which is everywhere), I'm re-running my recipe for fermented bread and butter pickles. Pickling cucumbers naturally have  L. plantarum  bacteria on them, and fermenting them with some brown sugar multiplies these bacteria. (Just don't use chlorinated water to wash them.) And if you're growing your own cucumbers, avoid spraying the fruits with  Bacillus thuringiensis , or Bt (leaves and vines are OK). It's unclear what effect a big dose of Bt would have on humans. Another benefit of DIY pickles: no emulsifiers like polysorbate 80, which is a common ingredient in pickles. If you have GI problems, it could be from emulsifiers. These sweet-and-sour pickles are the tastiest I've ever made. There's just a little added sugar (some of which the bacteria will consume) and turmeric that gives the pickles their bright color.  Special equipment Quar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more