The headline Covid 19 tracking data are currently hopsitalizations, cases, and deaths. Only the COVID Tracking Project provides daily “hospitalization” data and all three major metric providers - NY Times, John Hopkins, and COVID Tracking Project agree on cases (new positives) and daily deaths. The COVID Tracking Project “hopsitalizations” data is considered the vanguard of the change in Covid 19, and for the last 2 months has been reported as a very large surge.

It is not clear where COVID Tracking Project get the hospitalization data. It is described as currently hopsitalizaed. That implies it is the net of new admissions less “resolved” - died or recovered - and would be a function of the avergare “length of stay”, or “LOS” severity for Covid.

The consensus of Covid severity meta data reports has LOS mean of 5 days with a broad range from 1 daya to 28 days.

CDC has constructed a nation wide survey called “COVID-NET” while does not cover each state it is statistically robust. It does have South Dakota representation so is topical. COVID-NET provides weekly data of cumulative new Covid admissions and the weekly new Covid admissions. The COVID-NET should be similar to the COVID Tracking Project if adjusted by LOS.

However this does not seem to occur but if 15 days LOS is applied to COVID-NET data. That is not in context of reality and implies COVID Tracking Project hospitalization data is roughly 3 times overstated.

Of late the COVID-NET hopsital admissions has stopped increasing though the last data points in December 25th 2020.

COVID Tracking Proejct hopsitalization data is overstated and of late has diverged in terms of direction from COVID-NET.

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The COVID Tracking Project data on hopsitalizations cannot be tied out with the CDC South Dakota hopsital surveliance netowrk “COVID-NET”. With a Length of Stay (LOS) of 15 days, 3 times greater than severity consensus of 5 days, the CDC series fits the COVID TRacking Project until the first week of December.

The COVID Tracking Project headline hopsitalization series (called “currently hospitalized”) is likely overstated by 2 to 5 times and the recent surge is likely not occurring.

What is the basis for the COVID Tracking Project since it does not seem to be actual data from the hospitals?

COVID Tracking Project cases series seems to be th source of the hospitalization data using a simple algo of Case Hopsitalization Rate (CHR).

John Hopkins, NY Times, and COVID Tracking Project all have similar if not same deaths and cases. The following uses John Hopkins data.

The CDC ‘excess deaths’ is used, which is all deaths reported to the National Center of Health Statistics for 2020 less the prior three years average reported deaths. It is likely that the ‘excess deaths’ is a more accurate depiction of Covid 19 deaths than reported Covid 19 Deaths. However excess deaths are lagged by 2 weeks to 3 weeks.

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South Dakota is mapped against Sweden. Sweden is the ‘base case’ where there is only mitigation and no suppression such as quarantine or lock-downs.
Given the relentless infectiousness of Covid 19 and while treatment is improving there is still no cure, it is thought all countries will replicate Sweden status, especially deaths to percentage infected, in time - that supression only serves to pause this process.
Of course this does not consider a vaccine.

The cumulative integral, f(x) of normalized daily deaths to percentage of the population that have been infected seeks to summarize the current status of South Dakota.
It is assumed that Sweden is the ‘base case’ and without suppression all countries will to various degrees replicate the Sedish case.