Bumps: COVID-19 BIDEN+444 (April 9)

Last day of full reporting for the week.

14-day changes

+2% Cases. One percent worse.
-20% Hospitalizations. Two percent worse.
-29% Deaths. Two percent worse.

7-day daily averages

30,753 Cases.Worse by 262/day from April 2-8.
15,100 Hospitalizations. Worse by 30/day. This is the first time that BA.2 has resulted in the daily average
565 Deaths. Worse by 13/day. Hmm. The death interval of 3-4 weeks makes this unlikely to be caused by BA.2. Simply not enough time for the variant to infect and resolve in death. My suspicion--now listen, I wrote "suspicion" and an idiot's suspicion is not to be relied upon; perhaps should not even be typed--is that all of today's numbers represent a bit of a data dump bump--"End of the week! Get all your numbers in!" I can't say that I remember seeing a Saturday night data dump before so add that to suspicions about my suspicion.

A look at the graphs gives a visual idea of the "magnitude" of the bimps:

                                                                         Cases

                                                              Hospitalizations

And then the Quasis go and change the daily average numbers that go into their graphs. God I hate the New York Times so much. There is no explanation, no asterisk, nothing. They just don't think anybody is going to catch it. On this graph the April 2-8 number is 15,109. The April 3-9 average on this graph and as reported in bold at the top of their page is 15,100, a decrease of 9 Hospitalizations/day. Yesterday their April 2-8 number was reported top-bold as 15,070--which would be an increase of 30/day.

                                                                       Deaths

Similar editorial dereliction here. Deaths for April 2-8 were reported by the Times yesterday as 552. Today on the graph the April 2-8 number is 554 are as reported. The Deaths bimp was either 13/day or 11/day depending on which edition of the Times you believe, today's or yesterday's. Just inexcusable. The reporters should check their numbers with those on their graphs to make sure that they're the same before sending their work to copy. Clearly, the reporters did not. Then the editors should check the reporters reported numbers, hover over the reporters graph to make sure the numbers match before sending to print. Clearly, the editors did not.*

*And now, after finding errata in H's and D's I go back to C's and find that those numbers don't match either. Yesterday, April 2-8: reported yesterday as 30,491. Today, on the Times' C's graph the April 2-8 number is 30,501, an increase of 252 over yesterday's, or 262 depending...see above.