COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Dec. 21
Plus, our resident microbiologist on vaccine hesitancy among minority groups
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2019, the Fine Arts Center at Colorado College ran a live performance of The Sound of Music in their theatre. (This year, the FAC is putting on virtual programming for the theatre and Bemis School of Art).
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain the lack of transparent data on hospital capacities. Lostroh is a professor of molecular biology at Colorado College on scholarly leave who is serving as the program director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences at the National Science Foundation.
➡️ICYMI: On Wednesday, Colorado College psychology professor Tomi-Ann Roberts explained her research on women’s internalized self-objectification and how that might translate to Zoom.
✨New Contributor Alert: At the end of January, Isabel Hicks ’22 will step down from the COVID-19 Reporting Project. Please give a warm welcome, and a Twitter follow, to our new contributor, Cameron Howell ’23.
Phoebe’s Forecasts
NOTES: These forecasts represent her own opinion and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation or Colorado College. She used the public El Paso County dashboard for all data. Lostroh prepared these forecasts on Dec. 18.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Dec. 19th is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 51 in the national public health calendar. It is the 41st week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 482 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week Lostroh predicted about 4,330-4,525 new cases during the week ending Dec. 17. Instead, there were only 2,780.
“The COVID-19 outbreak in El Paso County, CO has improved considerably in that incidence is clearly falling (and rapidly) and percent positivity is declining slowly,” Lostroh said. “If the incidence curve continues to decrease at the current rate, we will be back under the threshold for the red-level safety zone during the first week in January.”
Determinants for Level Red: Severe Risk are an incidence rate of over 350 cases per 100,000 people and/or a positivity rate of over 15%. Lostroh predicts El Paso County will likely oscillate between Level Red and Level Orange until the weather improves.
Predicted cumulative reported cases in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The estimates are based on a linear curve-fit to declining daily reported cases for the last three weeks (best case), or on exponential curve fits to the most recent 14 days (middle) or seven days (low) of cumulative cases. The best-case scenario assumes there is less than one new COVID case connected to each reported case, while the other estimates assume there is more than one new case for every reported case. Horizontal boxes filled with a gradient from white to purple indicate the six weeks following an event that ought to reduce spread. Horizontal boxes filled with a gradient from white to pink indicate the six weeks following an event that might increase spread. Lostroh estimates next week’s cumulative cases will fall somewhere between the best-case scenario and the middle estimate. She predicts 1,912-2,484 new cases in El Paso County for the week ending Dec. 24.
Cumulative 14-day COVID-19 incidence per 100,000 people with calculated estimates
🗝️ Key points: The beginning downward trend in incidence correlates almost exactly with four weeks after Level Orange safety precautions began. Last week, it was too soon to see this correlation, Lostroh said. It will take about another two weeks to observe any correlation between Thanksgiving and/or the Level Red safety precautions in the incidence curve. If the current downward trend in incidence continues, the county could reach Level Orange in early January. Level Orange determinants are an incidence rate of 175-350 cases per 100,000 people and/or a positivity rate of less than or equal to 15%.
Cumulative reported hospitalizations and deaths of COVID-19 in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: Cumulative hospitalizations are plotted on the left axis in red while cumulative deaths are plotted on the right axis in black. The most recent reliable hospitalization data for El Paso County are from Monday, Dec. 14 while the most reliable death data are from Saturday, Dec. 12, Lostroh said.
Percent positivity for COVID-19 in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: Average 14-day rolling percent positivity is plotted in dark blue while the daily values are in light blue. As of Dec. 17, there is a two-week sustained decline in percent positivity in El Paso County, which plateaued at about 15% for several weeks. This week, the average 14-day rolling percent positivity is around 12%.
“Recent daily percent positivity has been less than 15% for 11 consecutive days, suggesting that the downward trend will likely continue for the near term,” Lostroh said.
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on vaccine hesitancy and dwindling hospital capacities
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: A number of recent studies found that Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to say they wouldn’t get the coronavirus vaccine when compared to their white counterparts. How concerned are you about vaccine hesitancy, particularly when it may affect populations that are already disproportionately impacted by COVID?
Lostroh: It is only reasonable to be suspicious of doctors and medical technologies if you are in one of these disadvantaged racial groups that have experienced both historical and contemporary medical discrimination. It was this year that Homeland Security was involuntarily sterilizing Hispanic women in the camps on the U.S. border. So, why would you trust a medical doctor? Conspiracy theories are going to be harder to debunk among populations who really have faced actual conspiracies, such as being sterilized when they didn’t want to be sterilized. Just that example alone is enough for all of us to go ‘oh my god, how hard would it to be to trust a doctor or the public health establishment if you’ve been subjected to that, or if people in your family have been subjected to that?’ So to get broad adoption of immunization in those populations, we need to be scrupulously transparent about everything to do with immunization and with the disease. We have got to tell people the truth and the facts about everything, not just once but over and over again. So if there’s an adverse event, we have to share that. We have to share exactly where the vaccine is going, how the distribution is going, and whether there are mistakes. That all has to be disclosed, because that’s the only way to build trust. That’s number one. Number two, we’re going to need people like Barack Obama, and rock stars and sports stars, to get immunized on camera and to talk about it. We’ve got to have buy-in from leaders in those communities. We need Stacey Abrams to get immunized and to go on TV in Georgia and say ‘we’re all getting immunized now, in order to vote you’ve got to be alive, so we’re all getting the vaccine.’ So, that’s the level of community leadership that we need to help us convince people to overcome that inertia and get the vaccine.
CCRP: On Friday, Dec. 11, the day the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, President Trump tweeted that the agency was a “big, old, slow turtle,” and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly told FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to submit his resignation if the FDA did not approve the vaccine by the end of the day. What do these comments mean in light of the fact that Pfizer’s vaccine has had the shortest development time compared to any other vaccine since the initial discovery of the virus?
Lostroh: If this were a vaccine that we were making more slowly because it was less of a crisis, then we would not necessarily combine phase two and three trials — those might be separated out. But it is an accelerated timeline. The number of people who’ve received the vaccine so far is smaller than we would like for a vaccine that, ideally, billions of people are going to get, and there could be safety concerns that arise as healthcare workers and more people start to get immunized with the vaccine. And these would be rare events that could not be detected with a smaller population. I think we have a pretty good handle on what will happen around the frequency of one in 100, but I don’t think we know yet what will happen on the scale of one in 1,000 or one in 10,000, and that scale is something you want to know about when you’re going to give a vaccine to millions of people. But the only way to know that is to give it out, so that’s what’s happening. I also think it’s really important that people know the story of HIV and how it impacted the speed of the FDA approving things. If it weren’t for HIV and AIDS activists, primarily gay men and lesbians, it would still take much, much longer to get any medication or vaccine approved in United States than it does. That’s number one. Number two, physically and logistically you can only manufacture a vaccine so fast. You can only distribute it and inject people with it and keep track of them so fast, and I honestly don’t think it’s possible to go any faster than we have gone. So this notion that the vaccine approval process has not been fast enough is just undereducated and bullying. It’s just nonsense.
CCRP: Some hospitals across the U.S. have reported limited and over-capacity situations for ICU wards and treatment, and some doctors who spoke up about the dire situation in hospitals faced potential job loss. Since some hospitals are not necessarily obligated to report occupancy data, and some healthcare workers are under pressure to not disclose information, how accurate do you think these reports about hospital capacities are?
Lostroh: I think this is a huge problem, and it connects to a whole lack of transparency with the for-profit healthcare sector. In general, I think hospital capacity data is accurate in some states, and I think it’s less accurate in others. Back in October, one of our local reporters did an investigation into the Colorado Hospital Association and found that not all hospitals in Colorado are even reporting their occupancy for COVID-19 data, so the data we are getting is incomplete. Now I haven’t seen a follow-up report on that, but I doubt that it’s gotten more complete. I hope that it has, but I don’t know. We have the numbers that we have, which is frustrating because probably some of those more comprehensive numbers are available to decision makers to use in making their policy decisions. That’s not being disclosed to the public, and to me this is a situation where, in a democracy, that should not be the case. All of this should be transparent. I think that there are many nurses and doctors and other kinds of healthcare workers in Colorado Springs who know perfectly well that our hospitals are probably more overwhelmed than is being reported, and they are not able to say anything because they fear losing their jobs. But you don’t see doctors and nurses saying that directly to the news, and so obviously they’re under pressure to not disclose what’s going on. And, again, to me that’s just a travesty. This information should be transparent and disclosed. No one should worry they’re going to lose their job if they tell the truth.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Isabel Hicks, Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear from time to time, as will infographics by Colorado College students Rana Abdu, Aleesa Chua, Sara Dixon, Jia Mei, and Lindsey Smith.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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