Raw Data: COVID-19 Hospitalizations in Six States

I don’t have any special reason for posting this. Just curiosity. As you know, there are upsides and downsides to tracking COVID-19 cases. The upside is that they’re an early warning indicator. The downside is that their accuracy depends a lot on the level of testing.
The mirror image is true of tracking mortality rates. The upside is they’re very accurate. The downside is they trail cases by three or four weeks, so by the time you see an upswing you already have weeks of new cases working their way through the population.
Somewhere in between you have hospitalizations. They trail case counts, but only by a week or two, and they’re fairly accurate, though not as accurate as death tolls. So I thought I’d take a look.
Unfortunately, some of the states we might be most interested in, like Texas and California, apparently don’t report hospitalizations. But I picked six states sort of at random and here’s what they look like:
Except for the recent surge in Oklahoma, none of the states has seen an increase of more than 50 percent in hospitalizations compared to June 1. Now, 50 percent is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s not a massive spike. On the other hand, it’s also true that over the past week every single state has seen a noticeable increase in hospitalizations.
So this is a different look, but the conclusion is pretty much the same as always: it sure looks like COVID-19 is on the comeback, especially outside the Northeast and Midwest. Hang tight, and keep wearing those masks.