COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — Oct. 5
Plus, our resident microbiologist on COVID-19 ‘long-haulers’
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2018, Colorado Springs residents were attending the first performance of “The Book of Mormon” at the Pikes Peak Center for Performing Arts. (All events at the Pikes Peak Center this month are either drive-in or postponed to a later date.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County and to explain how wearing a mask can reduce COVID-19 transmission. 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, we explained some of the pandemic’s impacts on CC’s sustainability goals. We also talked to a new professor about the process of beginning his job remotely.
🚨UPDATED: This newsletter was updated on Oct. 5 at 10:37 a.m. MT to reflect new numbers.
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 Oct. 3.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: Oct. 3 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 40 in the national public health calendar. It is the 30th week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 177 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 7,153 and 7,166 cumulative cases reported as of Oct. 1, and in actuality, there were 7,101.
Predicted cumulative reported cases in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: Between now and Oct. 8, Lostroh predicts El Paso County will probably see a total number of reported cases somewhere between the linear curve fit and the exponential curve fit, resulting in between 7,330 to 7,349 total reported cases. The best-case scenario is less likely because there are a series of changes in policies or practices that have increased social mixing and are likely to start showing effects in the next week. The cases reported for Oct. 3 are higher than is normal for a weekend, Lostroh says.
14-day incidence annotated with changes in local policy and activities
🗝️ Key points: The reported cases normalized per 100,000 people in El Paso County are reported in the standard 14-day rolling metric and are represented by black X’s. Horizontal boxes filled with a gradient from white to purple indicate the six weeks following an event that is predicted to increase social mixing and thus viral spread. The vertical lavender shading shows weeks 4–6 after one of these changes in policy or activities, thereby indicating when the record of reported cases is most likely to show an increase in response to that change or activity. The yellow horizontal boxes near the X-axis show the duration of policies that should decrease viral spread. The diagonal dotted line shows the approximate case incidence the county should have seen if the trend of decreasing incidence continued. More recently, El Paso County’s incidence was on a downward trajectory and would have reached zero reported cases about two weeks ago had the trend continued. Instead, the reported cases stopped declining so steeply and then even increased a bit, remaining slightly higher for the past 18 days.
Q-and-A with Lostroh: Our resident microbiologist on masks
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: Remind us what wearing a mask does for the rate of COVID-19 transmission.
Lostroh: The rate of transmission goes down because when you breathe out and you’re wearing a mask, some of the droplets that you would exhale are going to get deflected to the side and therefore not go so far as they would directly out of your mouth when you’re talking. Depending on the kind of fabric you’re wearing or the kind of mask you’re wearing, it’s also possible that droplets will get stuck in the fabric and not completely come out, and so you’re reducing the number of droplets that come out with each breath or with each word or song or shout. Of course, the size of the droplets and the type of material that the mask is made of make a big difference in terms of how effective the removal of droplets from the breath is, but in general, it’s still better to wear a mask — almost any mask is better than no mask if you are infected. If you are trying to avoid getting the infection, it’s a similar kind of thing. You don’t inhale so directly. The particles you’re inhaling are coming in through the side, which is less efficient than coming directly into your mouth or your nose. Also, you will just get a lower dose because fewer droplets of all sizes, but especially of larger sizes or of chemical properties that stick to the fabric of your mask depending on the type of fabric, will not get into your system as readily.
CCRP: Why should someone still wear a mask even if they’re more than six feet away from anyone else?
Lostroh: You should still be wearing the mask because six feet is just ... that’ll take care of X percent, but not 100% of the problem. If you can stay six feet away, then that helps, so a mask plus six feet is better than either of those things alone. And we know that it’s also spreading in small droplets, which can travel further than six feet. I’m not a physicist ... but I think droplets that are very small are more affected by things like airflow than they are by gravity. And I think that it’s better again to be further away for droplets that are that small but are not going to fall out of the air very quickly. That’s kind of strange to think of anything small enough that its behavior can be predicted without taking that gravity into account.
CCRP: What new information is available about “long-haulers,” or people who’ve had COVID-19 symptoms for an extended period of time?
Lostroh: I think the community is now large enough that people in medicine are taking it more and more seriously. I think it’s probably likely that there are going to be studies of those people, but I would guess the doctors who would provide that care and do that work are so involved with the acute care of cases right now that they may not have time to do that work right now. It’s going to be interesting to see if the medical community has the resources to study and take care of both the acute cases and study the long-term cases right now, but I think it’s a good example of patient organizing. It kind of reminds me of HIV and AIDS, where the patients actually know just as much as the doctors because they’re experiencing it, and talking to each other, and educating each other about it. There’s a lot of online communities springing up about this. ... It’s my understanding that they don’t have the virus in their bodies anymore, so not sure what the clinical approaches are to try to treat them and help them at this point. I have several friends who got it, and who are on oxygen long-term. Their lungs just have not returned to normal.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Arielle Gordon, and Isabel Hicks, 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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