Before we get to some analysis, here’s this week’s data–because of the long weekend, ‘this week’ is March 24 – March 31:

The entire city and all wards except for Ward 8 are below the German rollback threshold of 50 new cases per 100,000 per week–which also is the threshold the CDC suggests schools for all grades can reopen (0.05% in the second column below). The ‘good place’, which is one new case per 100,000 people per day, would be 0.007% in column two and 0.014% in column four. Wards 2 and 3 are close (Ward 3 backslid this week), but the other wards have a ways to go, with Wards 7 and 8 in the worst shape. These prevalences, in some ways, are worse than they look because a significant fraction of people are vaccinated (partially or fully), so part of the population is ‘ineligible’ for infection (or at a very reduced risk of it). While Wards 2, 4, and 7 saw large decreases, Wards 1, 3, 5, 6, and 8 had large increases, with D.C. as a whole having a prevalence about five percent higher than last week.

One bright spot are that the percent positive rates are still low, even though the number of people being tested is dropping. The other bright spot is D.C. had only four COVID-19 related deaths this week. While I’ll have more to say about vaccination tomorrow, D.C. is only increasing the percentage of partially vaccinated people by about 0.2% per day, sometimes less than that, and the vaccination disparities among wards seem to have grown wider according to the (highly confusing) D.C. data. We have to increase vaccination, especially in the 20-40 years old range if we want to stop this. Right now, Black people are getting hammered: 24/28 of those who died between May 1 to May 31 were Black. 77% of new cases during that period were Black (another nine percent identified as multi-racial). In D.C., COVID-19 has become a mostly ‘Black’ disease.

All right we are two cities.