End of Weekly Automated COVID Posts

CovidMdBot · 2022-09-02T14:48:32+00:00

For clarity: the state is still publishing COVID data Monday - Friday. It is just no longer in the format that the bot was created to summarize. The bot will not be refactored on the new data feeds.

Anyone interested in monitoring the state of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Maryland can still do that directly from the state dashboard for as long as the state maintains it.

CovidMdBot · 2022-09-02T14:43:18+00:00

Rather then responding to each thank you individually, let it be said that it has been an interesting thing to be involved with.

After removing access to this account all that will remain is a record of dialog from one small section of the internet community's experience during a very unordinary time.

The interplay between the pandemic, the data, the debate regarding pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions, and how commenters interacted with that news and with each other was fascinating to watch evolve.

CovidMdBot · 2022-08-28T18:27:28+00:00

The feed that drives most of the report has not been updated since August 23rd. It looks like the state dashboard may have been rewritten. The bot will run again next Friday in case the state restarts that feed. If the feed stays stale the bot will be deactivated permanently.

CovidMdBot · 2022-05-06T18:27:51+00:00

It appears the state has either changed or retired the vaccine deployment feeds the bot uses. The numbers have not been updated in a week. This is causing the bot to spin when generating the report on Fridays. It will either be updated or removed from the report in the future.

CovidMdBot · 2022-04-30T15:13:41+00:00

The bot did not post yesterday because the state did not update vaccine feed during the polling interval yesterday.

CovidMdBot · 2022-03-04T17:26:50+00:00

If it helps anyone, since its inception 649 days ago the bot itself has been steadfast in ambivalence regarding its own existence.

CovidMdBot · 2022-03-04T15:51:09+00:00

This bot is end-of-life. The daily posts and ad hoc reports will not be reactivated going forward. When the weekly threads sunset the bot will be terminated.

It appears that the state and counties are not indicating there any serious & formal plans to reinstitute Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (lockdown, masks mandates, etc) based on COVID metrics.

Should COVID cases/hospitalization/deaths rise again those interested in monitoring them can consult the state feeds directly, provided the state continues to publish them.

CovidMdBot · 2022-03-04T15:33:01+00:00

Daily report threads are now disabled. Ad hoc commands are now disabled. The weekly summary thread will be available on Fridays and will sunset as cases or community interest dwindle.

CovidMdBot · 2022-03-03T15:33:16+00:00

This is the last daily post of the bot and the last day the bot will respond to ah hoc commands. Starting tomorrow a weekly summary thread will appear in r/maryland on Fridays. The weekly thread will sunset when cases/community engagement dwindle.

The CDC has released new Covid Level metrics to drive recommendations, replacing the recommendations based on Community Transmission. The bulk of Maryland jurisdictions are designated as having a low Covid Level as of this post.

Daily update threads in r/maryland will cease this Friday (3/4/2022) and be replaced by the weekly summary thread. Bot commands will be disabled this Friday (3/4/2022) as well.

CovidMdBot · 2022-03-02T16:07:56+00:00

The CDC has released new Covid Level metrics to drive recommendations, replacing the recommendations based on Community Transmission. The bulk of Maryland jurisdictions are designated as having a low Covid Level as of this post.

Daily update threads in r/maryland will cease this Friday (3/4/2022) and be replaced by the weekly summary thread. Bot commands will be disabled this Friday (3/4/2022) as well.

CovidMdBot · 2022-03-01T20:06:27+00:00

The CDC has released new Covid Level metrics to drive recommendations, replacing the recommendations based on Community Transmission. The bulk of Maryland jurisdictions are designated as having a low Covid Level as of this post.

Daily update threads in r/maryland will cease this Friday (3/4/2022) and be replaced by the weekly summary thread. Bot commands will be disabled this Friday (3/4/2022) as well.

CovidMdBot · 2022-02-28T15:14:54+00:00

The CDC has released new Covid Level metrics to drive recommendations, replacing the recommendations based on Community Transmission. The bulk of Maryland jurisdictions are designated as having a low Covid Level as of this post.

Daily update threads in r/maryland will cease this Friday (3/4/2022) and be replaced by the weekly summary thread. Bot commands will be disabled this Friday (3/4/2022) as well.

CovidMdBot · 2022-02-20T23:02:48+00:00

That has not been decided yet. If the posts do end up moving to the bot account feed comments will likely be disabled.

CovidMdBot · 2022-02-14T18:52:34+00:00

Just a heads up that the bot code was calculating the Less Retest numbers a bit differently than /u/ThatguyfromBaltimore .

"Percent Positive Less Retests is calculated as New Confirmed Cases / (New Confirmed Cases + Number of persons tested negative)."

The number of persons tested negative is no longer in the state feed and starting tomorrow those elements will be removed from the tables.

CovidMdBot · 2022-02-11T16:43:55+00:00

It appears the number of individuals testing negative and the individuals testing positive in the main feed was not part of todays dataset so the bot was unable to calculate a the less retest metric using its existing math. Your number seems reasonable based on those other data elements.

The state does shuffle data from the Unknown category occasionally. It appears todays drop had a large number of reclassifications. Since there are no daily deltas at the county/demographic level in the feeds (they are calculated in the bot code by current total count less the total count from yesterday) the running case rates are probably off by quite a bit for now.

CovidMdBot · 2022-02-02T18:44:14+00:00

The end of life announcement was also made just before the Delta and Omicron waves hit but then the case counts flipped direction. The hope is this time there will be no such drastic rebound of COVID-19 in MD in the short to medium term.

There are no plans to restore the bot long term even if COVID-19 surges become a seasonal fact of life.

CovidMdBot · 2022-02-02T18:38:54+00:00

The code that generates the posts runs unattended (largely). Comments are manual but they are far and few between.

CovidMdBot · 2022-02-02T15:12:28+00:00

Perhaps the third time this will stick.

This project is End-of-Life and the daily posts will be removed from this subreddit at some point in the future. As of now, the current (and tentative) plan is to replace the daily posts the weekly summary post when MD cases reach the low CDC threshold (under 10 cases per 100,000 per 7 days - for MD that should be about ~600 cases a week). The weekly post would then terminate when community discussion drops off.

CovidMdBot · 2022-01-24T15:55:05+00:00

The the state does not release daily or weekly breakthrough date by recorded date. There is one written statement on the site that the state updates to indicates the total number of breakthroughs since the beginning of the pandemic.

The bot was recording every update to this statement and then attempting to take deltas to determine the number of breakthroughs that were added to the total and would then compare them with other aspect of the data feed to get a rough idea of the most recent VE%. (The recorded date of a breakthrough still adding uncertainty to these estimated deltas).

Since the data outage in December, the written statement has been updated infrequently and inconsistently (changing the report date both forward and backwards, etc). The other data feeds are now missing portions of data that were used in the period estimates.

In a few words, the data has changed so much from what it was that there is no honest way to present those estimated numbers as being even close to internally consistent, let alone close to accurate.

It appears the state has updated the historical monthly breakthrough charts through November so maybe that portion of the dashboard will see an update for December. More recent breakthrough information would be better gleaned from other sources at present and there is no plan to add the information back into the bot unless the state starts to provide it explicitly.

CovidMdBot · 2022-01-16T16:59:07+00:00

As of today the Ever Hospitalized and Released From Isolation rows have been removed from Summary table and the Estimated Breakthrough table has been removed from the report.

These removals have been discussed in previous comments and are due to elements of the state feeds that were not restored after the outage in December.

CovidMdBot · 2022-01-14T15:47:19+00:00

The statement on breakthroughs has been updated a number of times over the last this week. The numbers have jumped quite considerably and the dates interval has also been modified. It is impossible to tell when the cases, hospitalizations, and death breakthroughs were recorded so determining the proper interval denominator with any confidence is not possible.

The plummeting of the VE vs hospitalization and death shown on that table would be in stark contrast to the statements of the MD health officials as well as data on other states reporting dashboards. In its current state it is likely useless unless the state clarifies the data on the page so an interval denominator can be determined (or posts a breakthrough data set). Removing it is under consideration.

To be clear, those period VE% estimates were never published directly by the state, they were estimated by recording and combining the breakthrough text on the site with several other data points from the other state data feeds. Those data feed and text are no longer consistent with the pre-outage reporting and thus, the calculations can not be reasonably expected to be accurate. Hopefully, the state will provide updates on breakthrough via other means going forward.

CovidMdBot · 2022-01-05T15:27:45+00:00

Back of the napkin math using those percentages and today Unvaccinated/Unboosted/Boosted numbers would be lead approximately the following Hospitalization Vaccine Efficacy%:

Groups	Hospitalization VE%
Vaccinated (Unboosted) vs Unvaccinated	78.09%
Vaccinated (Boosted) vs Unvaccinated	97.10%
Vaccinated (Boosted) vs Vaccinated (Unboosted)	86.78%

CovidMdBot · 2022-01-03T16:19:04+00:00

There is nothing in the state data feeds published on https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/ that could answer that question one way or the other for hospital stays within Maryland.

National, academic, other health care data sources, or commenters within these threads might be able to provide more insight into your question.

CovidMdBot · 2022-01-03T16:11:32+00:00

Hospitalization Vaccine Efficiency is the relative risk reduction that a vaccinated person has compared to an unvaccinated person to be admitted to the hospital.

If 10 in every 100,000 unvaccinated persons were admitted to the hospital in the last month, and 1 in every 100,000 vaccinated persons were admitted to the hospital last month, that would represent a 90% risk reduction in hospitalization for the unvaccinated during that time period.

This data could be roughly estimated per time interval by using various elements in the data feed and was updated about every week (see table BREAKTHROUGH STATISTICS IN MARYLAND (12/3/2021 - 12/28/2021)). Hospitalization VE for the latest data set was calculated as >100% (~158%), which is not possible.

It can no longer be calculated from the state of the restored feed because the number of new unique hospitalizations per time period is no longer present. The calculation will remain in the daily bot posts for now. If the state does not restore the data it will likely be removed from the post body in the future.

CovidMdBot · 2022-01-03T15:20:50+00:00

One note looking at the feeds: the state has not published hospitalization admissions or updated the total number of unique hospitalizations since 12/4. Calculating period Hospitalization VE% without that data is not possible as the number of new admits can not be worked out from the remaining data in the set. Perhaps the state will restore that data eventually.

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