COVID-19 Forecast for El Paso County — April 5
Plus, a professor of public policy discusses the role of young people in the pandemic
Good morning, and happy Monday. On this pandemic date last year, Colorado College Outdoor Education held “an evening with Will Gadd ‘90,” in which the professional athlete screened films of his “various adventures.” (This year, Outdoor Education has hosted some of its events virtually, with others, like Friday’s “Bike Your Ballot” event, taking place in person.)
Today, Phoebe Lostroh returns to give her weekly COVID-19 forecast for El Paso County. 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.
Our Q-and-A section today features Zoe McLaren, an associate professor for the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. During the pandemic, McLaren has focused her work on how human behavior affects the pandemic, as well as how public policy can influence that behavior.
➡️ICYMI: On Wednesday, we reported on CC’s recent announcement that it would be holding May Commencement ceremonies for the classes of 2020 and 2021 in person. Also, how the Cheryl Schlessman Bennett Children’s Center has continued operations during the pandemic.
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 April 4.
⚖️ How her predictions last week shaped up: April 3 is the last day of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report week 13 in the national public health calendar. It is the 56th week since the first case was detected in El Paso County. Since March 13, 757 El Paso County residents have died of COVID-19. Last week, Lostroh predicted between 1,006 and 1,067 new cases in El Paso County for the week ending April 1. There were actually 1,362 cases.
Cumulative reported cases in El Paso County with predictions
🗝️ Key points: Reported cases are in black circles while the other symbols provide estimates based on curve-fitting. The high, middle, and low estimates are based on exponential curve-fitting to the most recent seven, 14, and 21 days, respectively. For the week ending April 8, Lostroh predicts 1,363-1,651 new cases in El Paso County.
“We expect the predictions to be most accurate when neither human behavior nor the virus are changing; we are seeing a combination of changing human behavior and a changing virus, which makes the calculations less reliable,” Lostroh said. “Human behavior has changed a lot locally; for example we would expect to start seeing the impact of lessening safety precautions around March 31 because that is four weeks since the 5 Star program began.”
Rolling seven-day incidence in El Paso County with predictions
🗝️ Key points: The actual calculated incidence is in black Xs, while the other symbols provide estimates based on curve-fitting for the most recent 21, 14, and seven days. The orange, yellow, and blue lines show when El Paso County had orange, yellow, or blue-level safety precautions in effect. The orange, yellow and blue-dotted lines show the thresholds for the new Dial 3.0 levels. As of April 4, the incidence per 100,000 people in El Paso County over the last seven days was 196.7.
Seven-day rolling percent positivity compared with daily percent positivity in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The seven-day rolling percent positivity for nasopharyngeal tests for viral nucleic acids is plotted in dark blue diamonds, while the daily percent positivity is plotted in light blue diamonds. The timing of red, orange, yellow, and blue-level safety precautions is indicated by the red, orange, and yellow-dotted lines. As of April 4, the percent positivity in El Paso County was 7.5%.
“Because it is likely that the variant viruses are taking over the local virus population and because the rolling seven-day percent positivity is at 7.5%, I think we will probably see a continued acceleration of new cases,” Lostroh said.
COVID-19 vaccination in El Paso County
🗝️ Key points: The vaccine dashboard tracks county vaccine distribution. Purple symbols correspond to the left axis, plotting doses administered, while red symbols correspond to the right axis, plotting vaccine series completed. El Paso County has administered a total of 281,435 doses. Some of those doses were the first shot someone received, while others were the second shot to complete the vaccine series. 112,666 people have received both shots and thus have completed the immunization series.
“The B117 and B.1.427/429 viruses are here and they both have mutations that make them more transmissible than the ancestral virus,” Lostroh said. “The vaccine is equally effective at preventing the B117 strain from infecting someone and less effective at preventing B.1.427/429 infection.”
Today’s Q-and-A: University of Maryland, Baltimore County professor Zoe McLaren on how human behavior affects pandemics
Zoe McLaren is an associate professor for the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. McLaren majored in biology and political science and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2000 before completing her doctorate in economics and public policy at the University of Michigan in 2010 and spending eight years as faculty in their School of Public Health. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. McLaren’s responses represent her own opinions and not necessarily those of her employer.
CC COVID-19 Reporting Project: What does your work in public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County look like in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how has that work related to other viral epidemics?
McLaren: My work on HIV, tuberculosis, and COVID-19 are all related because those are three diseases that cause a lot of mortality worldwide, are important epidemics, and are infectious diseases that are transmitted from person to person. So one thing about them is that every individual’s actions affect everybody else around them, so I do a lot of work thinking about those types of spillovers and how we can help the government and policy to guide those individual behaviors, so that it not only benefits them, but also benefits those around them. So that’s one of the big concerns when we think about HIV, tuberculosis, and COVID-19, is thinking about preventing cases, not just ‘what do we do in terms of treatment,’ because we want to make sure that we can reduce the size of the epidemics so that as few people get sick as possible. I work primarily thinking about how we can use technology in combination with human behavior to reduce the impact of epidemics, so there’s a lot of writing around testing. Testing is really important for HIV, tuberculosis, and COVID-19, so my work focuses on rapid antigen testing, or the rapid home tests. The idea there is that we want to get people information about their COVID-19 status as soon as possible, because once they know that they’re positive, they’re able to start taking precautions to prevent the spread of the virus to other people. So the main kind of intervention that we have with testing is information, and then that can guide people’s behavior. And that means isolating if they’re positive, it means making sure to wear a mask, and it means postponing social plans. I’ve also done some writing around the vaccine rollout for COVID-19, and I’ve done work on HIV and tuberculosis in the same way. We have a limited number of vaccine doses, so I’ve been thinking about how we want to allocate those among the population and geographically, and make sure we’re doing the most good with the limited doses we have.
CCRP: Last Monday, Gov. Jared Polis announced that effective April 2, all Coloradans 16 and older would be eligible to be vaccinated for COVID-19. How important is it for young people to be vaccinated?
McLaren: I think a lot of people with COVID-19 think about the vaccine primarily in terms of how it’s going to prevent them from getting hospitalized or prevent them from dying, and that is one really important outcome that the vaccine prevents. But vaccines also generally prevent transmission, and we now have evidence to show that the COVID-19 vaccines do prevent people from transmitting the virus. So that’s another really important role of the vaccination, and so I’ve focused on the fact that there are certain people that feel that they have a very low risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19, and they may be wondering whether it makes sense for them to get vaccinated. They think about vaccination as mainly something that prevents those worst health outcomes, and they may not think the vaccine applies to them or that it’s worth getting vaccinated. But the thing is that preventing transmission is something that we all benefit from, because if you are vaccinated, you’re less likely to transmit the virus, and that means fewer people around you will have cases, and they won’t be hospitalized or die. To end the pandemic, we’re going to need to bring cases down as low as possible. And so anything that we can do individually that helps reduce cases is going to be one step closer to ending the pandemic, and so that’s why it’s really important for young people to be vaccinated. Young people all around the country were under lockdown procedures, they’ve been wearing masks, they’re doing social distancing, they’re limiting their contacts — they’re doing all of these things to prevent the spread of COVID-19. And if they’ve been doing any amount of those things, it can also make sense for them to get vaccinated because it’s one or two doses that mean that you’re less likely to transmit and so it helps us keep everybody around us safe. The great thing about vaccines is that as more and more people get vaccinated and the case rates come down, it means that we can start easing up the other restrictions that we have in place. If most of the people at your college are vaccinated, it means the cases will be really low and will be much safer for you to be doing full in-person schooling in the fall just like normal. So the idea is that even if people aren’t technically low risk for hospitalization and death, we still want people to want to avoid getting sick.
CCRP: Some reports have pointed to the possibility that partisan politics have influenced some Americans’ plans to be vaccinated. To what extent does this concern you?
McLaren: I’m concerned about what’s called vaccine hesitancy overall. Vaccine hesitancy is an umbrella term for people who are unsure about the benefits of the vaccine, people who want to delay getting a vaccine, and people who refuse the vaccine. There’s a number of different factors and a number of different groups that have higher rates of vaccine hesitancy, and partisan politics have been one of the drivers of that debate. The best evidence that we have is that the vaccine is extremely safe and extremely effective, but not everybody believes the scientific evidence that we have despite the CDC and the FDA approving vaccines, so I am concerned about partisan politics making it difficult for people to get access to the vaccine or trust our national organizations of public health that are working to keep us safe. And so that is one of my big concerns. The good news is that we see even among those partisan populations that the rates of vaccine hesitancy are coming down as people are seeing around them the incredible effects the vaccines are having and how they’re helping us get back to normal. More people are becoming comfortable with the idea of getting vaccinated.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists 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.
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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