Premise: We believe that relevant information is crucial for individuals to assess the status of the COVID pandemic in their area in order to make decisions about how to live their lives. In other COVID updates you see in the news (at all levels) you will find a great number of we consider to be extraneous or irrelevant information that, to be blunt, is largely reported to make scary headlines.
In our view, the most objective and relevant metrics for COVID assessment, at this point in time, are threefold: Number of Citizens Vaccinated Per Day (including % of total population fully vaccinated), New Hospital Admissions, and Deaths per day. Vaccinations per day and the % of total population fully vaccinated give us a glimpse of where we are in terms of “herd immunity” and how quickly we’ll get there; Hospital Admissions related to COVID (CLI’s in Health Department speak) tell us objectively, better than cases or positivity rates or the status of “variants,” the status of serious current COVID cases in our community; and Deaths, while a somewhat lagging indicator, gives us an understanding of the ultimate metric – how many people are dying of COVID.