Good news! Oh wait, there's a logic error

[haapai]

The front page of the NYT contains an article regarding the dramatic decline in COVID cases and deaths in nursing homes.  link

It had me bowled over six hours ago.  Now I'm staring at the graphs and seeing a problem.  Can you spot it? 

Yeah, I'm bored, but I have reason to believe that this good news has not been fully digested yet. 

[Opti]

I have not recreated a free NYT login, so I did not see the graph. Willing to share a hint?

[haapai]

This may be messy, but I'll try to grab the graphs. 

Here's my shot at grabbing the death graph, since I'll probably lose the label.

020%40%60%80%100%120% of weekly deathscompared with start of vaccinationsJulySept.Nov.Jan. 2021Feb. 7Vaccinationrollout begins
Deaths among nursing home residents have dropped significantly since vaccinations began.
All U.S. Covid deaths
Deaths among nursing home residents
Source: New York Times database; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services·Data shown is normalized compared with the weekly deaths for the week ending Dec. 20, 2020 and is through Feb. 7.

[haapai]

Nope, that didn't work.  Any tips for how to grab an image and paste it?

[haapai]

not that either

[NoNamePerson]

Feb 25, 2021 10:48:14 GMT -5 haapai said:

not that either

Just give us your login info and we’ll all be able to see the problem

[Tiny]

Is it because the people in nursing homes who were going to die from covid19 have already done so? And then factor in that some of the people who would have moved into the facilities in 2020 died of Covid19 (or something else possibly related to Covid19) before they got there?   (and then there is that bit about how the homes were sending the very ill (as they should do) to the hospital  - which if the patient died at the hospital would not 'count' as having died at the facility) 

I'm not wording that right.

The article does say that about 130K nursing home/assisted living residents have died from covid19. That's about 1/4th of deaths.

I guess I'm going for the same idea behind a school that has 'cherry picked' it's students having higher test scores. Or if a failing school manages to remove or recategorize or somehow remove the worst students' scores they suddenly have "higher scores".

[haapai]

Maybe you can see the graph and the blurb just by going to the NYT's homepage.  It's the top story at the moment.  I'll grant you extra stars if you can figure out the problem without the breadcrumbs that can be found in the article. 

Does anyone else know how to grab and paste the graph?  I'm out of ideas. 

[justme]

Feb 25, 2021 11:06:53 GMT -5 haapai said:

Maybe you can see the graph and the blurb just by going to the NYT's homepage.  It's the top story at the moment.  I'll grant you extra stars if you can figure out the problem without the breadcrumbs that can be found in the article. 

Does anyone else know how to grab and paste the graph?  I'm out of ideas. 

You can screenshot it. If you use tapatalk they let you add photos through their app without having to upload it to a photo hosting site. Though if you don't have tapatalk that's a bit of steps. 

[haapai]

Feb 25, 2021 11:03:56 GMT -5 Tiny said:

Is it because the people in nursing homes who were going to die from covid19 have already done so? And then factor in that some of the people who would have moved into the facilities in 2020 died of Covid19 (or something else possibly related to Covid19) before they got there?   (and then there is that bit about how the homes were sending the very ill (as they should do) to the hospital  - which if the patient died at the hospital would not 'count' as having died at the facility) 

I'm not wording that right.

The article does say that about 130K nursing home/assisted living residents have died from covid19. That's about 1/4th of deaths.

I guess I'm going for the same idea behind a school that has 'cherry picked' it's students having higher test scores. Or if a failing school manages to remove or recategorize or somehow remove the worst students' scores they suddenly have "higher scores".

I was thinking of something else.  On the other hand, you are right that a person can only die once and that the number of elderly persons in nursing homes is probably quite low now due to them being so dangerous and miserable to be in.  We should be getting better information regarding changes in the number of persons living and working in nursing homes but we are not. 

I'll point to some breadcrumbs from the article's text. 

“I’m almost at a loss for words at how amazing it is and how exciting,” said Dr. David Gifford, the chief medical officer for the American Health Care Association, which represents thousands of long-term care facilities across the country.

“What is certainly surprising to me is how quickly we’re seeing this,” said Dr. Sunil Parikh, an associate professor of epidemiology and medicine at Yale School of Public Health in Connecticut

In one promising sign, the American Health Care Association, the industry group, looked at nearly 800 nursing homes that received early doses of the vaccine in December and compared caseloads with facilities in the same counties that had not yet held a vaccine clinic. The nursing homes that got the earlier vaccine saw a 48 percent decline in cases among residents, compared with 21 percent among nearby nursing homes.

The last sentence in that last bit of text is a big clue.  Now look at the graphs again. 

[haapai]

Feb 25, 2021 11:08:54 GMT -5 justme said:

You can screenshot it. If you use tapatalk they let you add photos through their app without having to upload it to a photo hosting site. Though if you don't have tapatalk that's a bit of steps. 

I'm a laptop and flip phone kind of gal.  I don't even know what an app is. 

[justme]

Feb 25, 2021 11:24:37 GMT -5 haapai said:

Feb 25, 2021 11:08:54 GMT -5 justme said:

You can screenshot it. If you use tapatalk they let you add photos through their app without having to upload it to a photo hosting site. Though if you don't have tapatalk that's a bit of steps. 

I'm a laptop and flip phone kind of gal.  I don't even know what an app is. 

Ah. You can screenshot on the laptop, but would need to upload it to a photo hosting site first. 

Only other thing is if you right click on the image and select "copy image address" and then click the insert image and paste the address into that. But I'm guessing you tried that? 

[Tiny]

You can "snip" or "screen shot" by pressing the "window" button, the shift key and the letter "s" Most keyboards have "window" button to the left of the space bar.

You may need to play around with how to take a snip and how to edit it and save it.

It's a useful thing to be able to do - even if you can't get the snip to this thread.

(I take a snip of a screen or something on line and paste it to word doc (or word pad) for later reference. usually it's a recipe or some bit of instructions for something.)

[haapai]

Nope, that didn't work.  And no, I hadn't tried it yet. 

[Tennesseer]

[haapai]

Yay, Tenneseer!  You took mercy on me. 

Psst, what I'm seeing is easier to spot in the new cases graph. 

[Tennesseer]

Copied the article title and then Googled the article title in parentheses with the word jpg after the quoted thread title. 

Once Google return with the results I then checked 'Images' and found the graph there. 

I then  copied the graph's URL address and pasted it into Proboards post image function. 

[thyme4change]

You are going to have to tell me WTF you are talking about. I am not following all your hints and whatever.

[haapai]

Okay, I will.  Look at the blue line - all U..S. Covid cases.  Can you see the Thanksgiving and Christmas spikes?  Now look at the red line - cases among nursing home residents. 

Why is there almost no Christmas spike among nursing home residents?  There's a slight bowing of the line, but no increase in new cases.

I'll give you a moment to answer that question for yourself.  Then you'll probably figure out why this graph is so misleading. 

[thyme4change]

Because nursing homes stayed locked down and the general population did not?

[haapai]

Feb 25, 2021 13:44:26 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

Because nursing homes stayed locked down and the general population did not?

Bingo!  The lines were going to diverge anyways. 

I continue to believe in vaccination.  Vaccines work.  I just don't like seeing their effectiveness misrepresented in this way. 

[pulmonarymd]

The other point is that the lockdown worked. Keeping them isolated from the general population kept them from getting sick. Important for all the people criticize nursing homes because they are retrieving visitors.

Nursing home staff was also being vaccinated, and they were the vectors bringing the virus in. So it is still likely that the vaccines had an effect

[djAdvocate]

yeah. even if Texas gets stupid at this point, the vast majority of the USA is on the downslope of the curve.

I would advocate that we just bar people from Texas from traveling to our state(s). they can kill each other off, but they should stay the fuck away from me.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Mar 12, 2021 15:47:52 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

yeah. even if Texas gets stupid at this point, the vast majority of the USA is on the downslope of the curve.

I would advocate that we just bar people from Texas from traveling to our state(s). they can kill each other off, but they should stay the fuck away from me.

The problem is you have all the spring break kids who are going to diverge on an open TX, then fly home.  It wouldn’t surprise me if we see an upward blip in April.  

[pulmonarymd]

I think we see one more, smaller surge this spring, due to a combination of this stupidity and the variants. it will hopefully be shorter due to the ramp up of the vaccination delivery. Cases have hit a plateau, and we are doing stupid stuff. it is a shame, because holding of for 4-6 weeks would likely prevent it.

Hope I am wrong.

[djAdvocate]

stupid might kill another 100k, unfortunately.

AGAIN, if we would all just behave like adults, and stop whining about masks (which are a fact of daily life for probably 5% of the working public for their entire careers), those lives could be spared. but because enough of us are selfish assholes, we are going to pay for it with the blood of grandma.