This week I will be working on two different counties. Passaic County New Jersey is my home.
TRAVIS COUNTY (TEXAS)
My prediction for the week of 12/6 was 2200-2300. Yea yea, I know. Prediction a range is kind of a cop out. However, the actual count was 2164. So I wasn’t far off. The prediction was based on the reported spike in travel due to the holidays, and following a trend of Holiday Case Spikes. (4th of July, Halloween, etc)
With 2164 new cases, the Travis County Total Case count is now around 40,205. Nearly 8.01% of its reported population.
With that being said, I have started to run multiple forecasts. So far I have: 4 Week Average, 3 Week Average, 2 Week Average, Previous Week Percent Increase (Or decrease), 14 Day Averages and finally….. 7 Day Averages. Not to mention the, no better reason than its interesting, Temperature Tracking. (High Temp = Low Cases. Low Temp = High Cases)
FORMULA FORECASTS (for 12/7)
4 Week: 1.25 Spread Rate = 2712 Cases
3 Week: 1.16 Spread Rate = 2518 Cases
2 Week: 1.11 Spread Rate = 2410 Cases
14 Day Average: 247 Avg= 1729 Cases
7 Days Average: 309 Avg = 2163 Cases
Previous Week % Increase: 0.2517% Increase = 1263.25 Cases
MY PREDICTION
Halloween saw a three week long increase streak. The week of Halloween and prior saw case increases of: 669, 595, 691, 466. Yet the three weeks after were 948 (142%), 1444 (216%) and 1824 (273%).
The week of Thanksgiving was 1609. So following the Halloween increase percentages (Thats 1609 X 216%) we could see an increase of 3473 cases for the week of 12/7.
“But Dave, all the numbers you just threw at us are all over the place!" I know. It’s a lot.
FINAL: I’m gonna go with my gut here and say we see an increase close to 216%. This is based on previous holiday trends and putting into account the exponential spread idea that more people spread to more people (Ground breaking idea. I know)
Travis County Covid Cases for 12/7-12/13: 3400
PASSAIC COUNTY (NEW JERSEY)
By popular demand (one person asked) I will be tracking Passaic County as well. I really only just started looking at the data. I found historical Covid Case counts starting from March 24th, 2020. I updated the counts using Googles Covid Case Tracker. There is still some work to be done here. However….
Previous week increases were:
12/6- 2927 (Total Case count is 32635. Or 6.5% of total reported population)
11/30- 2927
11/23- 2784
11/16- 2189
11/9- 2325
11/2- 1269
So we can see theres an increase trend. The interesting thing is that the week of Halloween was only 838 cases. The week prior was 468 and the week prior to that (week starting in 10/12 for those of you keeping score at home) was only 371 cases.
So from Halloween we saw an increase per week of:
11/2: 51%
11/9: 83%
11/16: -6%
11/23: 27%
FORMULA FORECASTS (for 12/7)
4 Week: 1.27 Spread Rate = 3730 Cases
3 Week: 1.09 Spread Rate = 3185 Cases
2 Week: 1.16 Spread Rate = 3400 Cases
14 Days Average: 381 Avg = 2667 Cases
7 Days Average: 418 Avg = 2936 Cases
Previous Week % Increase: 0.1099% Increase = 1714.50 Cases
MY PREDICTION
Quick and Dirty….. Without spending too much time on this I predict the 12/7-12/13 case increase to be around 3500. It could even hit 4000. My 4 week Spread Rate is high because of the Holiday increase trend. Based on what we saw after Halloween, I predict that forecast to be close to correct.