I want to share my toolkit so that others would share theirs.
Texas Medical Center - Overview of TMC ICU Bed Capacity And Occupancy
Relevance: I live in Houston
How I Use It: They don't keep past days so every day I save the image to compare across days. The display of information here is unlike anything I've ever seen and basically I just needed to sit and stare at it for about 10 minutes before I understood what I was looking at.
My Takeaways: This is the main chart that proves that media hysteria over ICUs filling up in Houston is flat-out false. What you see on this chart is that Phase 1 Intensive Care is Full, but its ALWAYS full. They are ignoring Phase 2 and 3 ICU capacity, as well as the surgical bed capacity that can be converted into ICU beds.
JULY 9th
I'm going to pluck out the right side of that July 9th chart and compare it side by side with the July 14th chart to make it easy to compare. As you can see, the Texas Medical Center ICU capacity is essentially flat when you compare those 2 days. In the SETRAC section I begin below this image, I'll examine that trend more closely.
SETRAC Dashboard
Relevance: SETRAC stands for SouthEast Texas Regional Advisory Council and it is AWESOME.
How I Use It: I mainly live in the "ICU Bed Usage" tab. This lets me look at the entire region I live in and then zoom in to the county level, specifically Harris County.
My Takeaways: From my tracking of our capacity, COVID patient growth in our ICUs peaked and have stayed flat since July 9th, both in Southeast Texas and in Harris County. What we are hoping is that this is the crest, and that the curve bends back down to take us out of this wave. I added red boxes to these charts below to illustrate what I mean.
SOUTHEAST TEXAS
HARRIS COUNTY
91-DIVOC
Relevance: This is the best visualization tool I've found to date to view data on a state level, and to compare states.
How I Use It: I scroll down to the 2nd interactive chart that lets you look at state-level data. I mainly use it to track the Texas Cumulative Death Rate. This lets you highlight multiple states and multiple data points to lay them on top of each other. It also gives you a direct link to share your custom chart and ability to save it in multiple formats.
My Takeaways: The cumulative death rate in Texas had decreased every day since May 24th, when it was 2.74%, until July 14th when it reached 1.2%. Unfortunately, on July 15th it ticked back up to 1.21% However, when you compare the cumulative death rate in Texas to every other state, the only states with a lower one are Tennessee, Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Utah. We are doing it right.
So lets click "Add Additional Highlight" to include New York for comparison. NY's cumulative death rate is 8% compared to ours, it's not even close.
Lets get rid of New York and focus back on just Texas. Click "+Add Additional Data" and select "Mortality Rate, 1 Wk. Average" and "Scale Using Graph Units". To make the chart clearer, set SHOW to "Highlight Only". This shows some cause for concern. Starting about 10 days ago, our 1 Week Mortality Rate started climbing, which is why our drop in Cumulative Death Rate started slowing down until finally yesterday it increased from 1.2% (July 14th) to 1.21% (July 15th)
OTHER BOOKMARKS:
Harris County ARCGIS Dashboard
State of Texas ARCGIS Dashboard
Texas Medical Center - Overview of TMC ICU Bed Capacity And Occupancy
Relevance: I live in Houston
How I Use It: They don't keep past days so every day I save the image to compare across days. The display of information here is unlike anything I've ever seen and basically I just needed to sit and stare at it for about 10 minutes before I understood what I was looking at.
My Takeaways: This is the main chart that proves that media hysteria over ICUs filling up in Houston is flat-out false. What you see on this chart is that Phase 1 Intensive Care is Full, but its ALWAYS full. They are ignoring Phase 2 and 3 ICU capacity, as well as the surgical bed capacity that can be converted into ICU beds.
JULY 9th
I'm going to pluck out the right side of that July 9th chart and compare it side by side with the July 14th chart to make it easy to compare. As you can see, the Texas Medical Center ICU capacity is essentially flat when you compare those 2 days. In the SETRAC section I begin below this image, I'll examine that trend more closely.
SETRAC Dashboard
Relevance: SETRAC stands for SouthEast Texas Regional Advisory Council and it is AWESOME.
How I Use It: I mainly live in the "ICU Bed Usage" tab. This lets me look at the entire region I live in and then zoom in to the county level, specifically Harris County.
My Takeaways: From my tracking of our capacity, COVID patient growth in our ICUs peaked and have stayed flat since July 9th, both in Southeast Texas and in Harris County. What we are hoping is that this is the crest, and that the curve bends back down to take us out of this wave. I added red boxes to these charts below to illustrate what I mean.
SOUTHEAST TEXAS
HARRIS COUNTY
91-DIVOC
Relevance: This is the best visualization tool I've found to date to view data on a state level, and to compare states.
How I Use It: I scroll down to the 2nd interactive chart that lets you look at state-level data. I mainly use it to track the Texas Cumulative Death Rate. This lets you highlight multiple states and multiple data points to lay them on top of each other. It also gives you a direct link to share your custom chart and ability to save it in multiple formats.
My Takeaways: The cumulative death rate in Texas had decreased every day since May 24th, when it was 2.74%, until July 14th when it reached 1.2%. Unfortunately, on July 15th it ticked back up to 1.21% However, when you compare the cumulative death rate in Texas to every other state, the only states with a lower one are Tennessee, Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Utah. We are doing it right.
So lets click "Add Additional Highlight" to include New York for comparison. NY's cumulative death rate is 8% compared to ours, it's not even close.
Lets get rid of New York and focus back on just Texas. Click "+Add Additional Data" and select "Mortality Rate, 1 Wk. Average" and "Scale Using Graph Units". To make the chart clearer, set SHOW to "Highlight Only". This shows some cause for concern. Starting about 10 days ago, our 1 Week Mortality Rate started climbing, which is why our drop in Cumulative Death Rate started slowing down until finally yesterday it increased from 1.2% (July 14th) to 1.21% (July 15th)
OTHER BOOKMARKS:
Harris County ARCGIS Dashboard
State of Texas ARCGIS Dashboard
