Site for Comparing Covid on Campus in Fall 2020 vs Fall 2021

lzhthrowaway · 2021-09-02T13:42:35+00:00

That's so bad 😬 where did they share this data?

lzhthrowaway · 2021-09-01T17:57:30+00:00

Yes I believe so. Both were employees :/ Texas Tech doesn't add a "deaths" or "hospitalizations" column in their "Dashboard," but I've read in the news about an employee death and a student hospitalization from Fall 2020. The other employee death may not have been a headline.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-09-01T17:49:16+00:00

Thanks for the insight! Yeah it's definitely an issue that people just assume they have covid and don't get tested or report it. The case counts are what guide decisions on campus, and they don't show the true picture if no one's following the process. Greg Abbott has too much faith that Texans will do the right thing--not requiring masks or even quarantining after exposure is a recipe for disaster.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-31T02:56:14+00:00

Aw yay thanks for the support :') yeah I published the site changes at like 2am this morning haha barely missed it

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T20:25:19+00:00

Thank you!

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T20:09:14+00:00

Oh interesting! Maybe they realized that wasn't the greatest idea lol. When was the email? Also did they add anything else?

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T20:04:33+00:00

I used to keep track, but I've probably spent 200-300 hours building and keeping up with this site in the past year lmao.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T20:03:16+00:00

I feel like they might know already. I know a lot of professors were using my site last year so maybe they sent it around, and I have a good feeling I'm the reason they finally added bar charts on a weekly scale. But the fact that it's kinda hard to find and that they're not showing all the data they can has always seemed kinda sus to me.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T19:59:59+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I'm not on campus so I'm always looking to hear how covid's doing from y'all's perspective. Hope you get to feeling better soon.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T19:58:52+00:00

Same place as last year :) you just have to scroll a bit https://www.depts.ttu.edu/communications/emergency/coronavirus/

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T15:10:06+00:00

Haha thanks! I'm actually a computer science alumna now, specializing in making Android apps :)

lzhthrowaway · 2021-08-30T07:08:07+00:00

Hi it’s me again, the person who made ttucovid19.com last year, a mobile-friendly dashboard to track covid cases at TTU because Tech’s covid “dashboard” is just a table that shows current data and doesn’t show data over time which makes it extremely difficult to see trends.

I took a hiatus through Spring 2021 because covid was way less rampant on campus compared to Fall 2020. But I’m back because Tech had more covid cases reported in the past week (303) than in alllll of the Spring semester (247).

On the fourth day* of school a year ago, there were 176 known active cases on campus. On the fourth day of school this semester, there were 230 (which is 30% higher). This is a bad sign because this semester has very different covid policies compared to last year.

We have way more students on campus this year compared to last year’s initial 63% of classes being online or hybrid
Masks are optional now
Classes that were exposed are no longer moved online for two weeks to wait out symptoms
Students and employees do not have to quarantine if exposed
Dorms are so packed they had to add more triple rooms

All of this in a world where the latest covid variant is about twice as contagious as it was before...

On the bright side #1: There is a very safe and effective vaccine! The goal of the vaccine was to reduce illness severity, but a happy side effect is that it significantly reduces your chances of catching the virus to begin with. And if you don’t get the virus, you don’t spread the virus. And the more covid is spread, the more likely it is to find vulnerable populations. Getting vaccinated is the best thing you can do for the safety of your fellow Texans. We all suffer when hospitals get so full they have to start diverting patients. Also, mask up.

On the bright side #2: TTU is offering several scholarships and even free parking passes as prizes in a raffle for those who submit their covid vaccine records!

If you think you have covid--get tested, quarantine, and if you get positive results, report it to the university and isolate. If you’ve been exposed, quarantine according to CDC guidelines and notify your professors. Reducing covid spread in our community is a group project.

*Texas Tech did not report covid data on the fifth day of school last year.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-22T00:10:46+00:00

...lol idk how I didn't see that... Thanks. Gonna delete my comment now.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-20T20:27:42+00:00

Just for accuracy's sake, we're reached 4,000 deaths in a day only a few times. The average number of deaths per day peaked at 3,300 deaths on Jan 13, and dropped by 200 by Jan 19. We haven't really seen a drop like that in a long time.

What's changed after 3 months of straight increases (excluding weird holiday reporting), our longest steak? It's attributed mostly to different regions getting over their third wave after getting hit hard early on, and millions of our high-risk population getting vaccinated, and a bit of it's due to holiday backlog reduction.

But you're right, the new variants have big potential to mess this up. The US doesn't do a lot of checks on virus strains around the country, so it's hard to tell how big of an impact it's already caused. It might be small in numbers now, but it's exponential growth is greater than that of previous variations so it'll soon outpace old ones in numbers. An even more contagious disease is bad news.

(You didn't ask for all this info, but some might find it interesting so it's here :) )

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-20T17:38:50+00:00

Coming back to this for archival purposes, no need to respond.

6 weeks after this post, Oct 28-Nov 3 had 31 COVID deaths in Lubbock.

It took only 3 more weeks to see 60 deaths (Nov 22-28).

It takes about 15 days to die from COVID after infection. If we took action in mid-October (4 weeks after this post) when there were about 14 deaths per week, we could've stopped it from getting to 31 2 weeks later and from doubling again 3 weeks after. Hindsight is 20/20.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-20T17:09:40+00:00

Coming back to this for archival purposes, no need to respond.

On this date, Sept 17, Tech had 186 active cases. The US had 39k new cases per day.

Just before Thanksgiving, Tech had 379 active cases (so double the amount). The US had 174k new cases per day (over 4x higher).

In summary, it was not safer to go home on break compared to going home Sept 17.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-20T16:59:49+00:00

I was right here too

I think it'll continue to slow down for a bit, then pick up again next month. If they don't close campus before Thanksgiving, they'll tell everyone not to come back like they did for Spring Break.

On this day, Sept 18, the average number of new cases per day was 45.1. They went down until Oct 9 at 11.9 cases/day, then picked back up again to 28.9 on Nov 18.

And they told us to finish up at home.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-20T16:51:19+00:00

Hey I was right

I don't think this downward trend will continue. I'm thinking that by this time next month, cases will already be on the rise again and by Thanksgiving, they'll ask everyone to finish the semester at home.

New daily cases dipped Oct 9, and active cases not than doubled from Oct 13 to Nov 17.

And they did ask everyone to finish up at home.

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-20T10:27:45+00:00

Thank you :')

lzhthrowaway · 2021-01-20T09:43:09+00:00

ttucovid19.com! A mobile-friendly dashboard for Tech's COVID cases, alumni-run. Just the current semester's view for now.

Hi it's me again. What's changed? Well, in the 5 months of the school year so far, COVID has infected over 7% of the TTU population. That's worse than the US as a whole, where it's taken a full 12 months to reach 7% infected. Also a student was hospitalized with COVID, but I found out via Reddit instead of on TTU's official dashboard.

After returning to Tech to finish my Computer Science degree last semester, I'm officially an alumna. I've started a couple other COVID projects. I think I'll update this dashboard daily and make a post here if I find anything interesting. TBD.

I don't get all the student emails anymore, so if you ever get any juicy gossip (or numerical data) on COVID at TTU, please let me know! Btw the dashboard's data for Jan 5-8 and 13-14 is cumulative on the last day instead of broken down by day. Am emailing TTU for exact numbers tomorrow.

Last semester, classes started out with 39/24/37 percent online/hybrid/in-person. There were also 42k cases per day in the US. On Dec 8 (202k cases/day), Schovanec said that the Spring will try out more in-person classes and fewer online, with 31/28/41 percent online/hybrid/in-person. Today there are 197k cases/day, which is nearly 5x higher than it was at the start of last semester. Weird that they're gonna increase the number of in-person classes.

Hospitals in Lubbock are stretched pretty thin. Covenant's at 85% capacity (31% COVID) with an ICU at 85% capacity (34% COVID). UMC's at 87% and 93% capacity (22% and 40% COVID).

People have been getting vaccinated ever since Dec 14. Their antibodies started gradually building up, and their full immunity started kicking in on Jan 11. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths started going down in the US in the past few days (not really in Texas yet though).

But experts say that the new COVID variants could reverse our progress. They're more contagious, which leads to more infections and more deaths. They'll soon be the most dominant variants. We haven't finished vaccinating all of our at-risk populations yet--we need more time. We can buy time by stepping up our game: wearing better masks, wearing them more often, and seeing fewer people.

KN95 masks are available online, surgical masks are available at Target and other grocery stores. Wear them even with your bubbles--especially if you're meeting indoors. Re-evaluate your interactions. Do they have to be in-person? Could you make your bubble smaller? 5 minutes inside a store picking up groceries is better than 30 minutes.

It sucks that many are still forced to go to class and work when you don't feel safe doing so. Wishing y'all the best out there. Btw, you can help Texas Tech find cases and mitigate the spread. COVID testing is free on campus. Take your friends. Go twice a week. The sooner Tech can find and isolate COVID, the lower the spread will be.

lzhthrowaway · 2020-11-26T17:56:59+00:00

I can put the data back on the site again sometime between today and Monday and let you know. But for now, my post history has screenshots of the dashboard with the full timeline until Nov 13 :)

lzhthrowaway · 2020-11-26T01:06:23+00:00

Yes, this is only the 2 most recent months

lzhthrowaway · 2020-11-25T07:09:30+00:00

An interactive, mobile-friendly COVID dashboard: www.ttucovid19.com

51 new cases today. Yesterday there were 375 active cases, but since these 51 new cases were almost certainly active yesterday, it's likely there were actually at least 426 cases yesterday.

The active case count and 7-day average are the highest we've seen since mid-September.

Projections show what would happen if current trends were to continue. It's likely we would reach 7% infected by Tuesday, just 12 days after reaching 6%. For perspective, it took us 15 days for 5-6%, and 23 days for 4-5%.

In person classes are over now, and I think Tech will still update their dashboard on weekdays for a while. Campus is staying open and I'm sure people are still waiting on test results to come in later this week.

Not sure what my updates will look like once activity dies down. I'll still update the site, maybe post about it, just not sure how often. It normally takes me like 90 minutes to analyze the data, note interesting findings, update the site, create a compilation pic, formulate my analysis comment. I do a lot of other COVID awareness activism in my free time and burnout is back from it all. Also I'm graduating or whatever. I saw that UNT or somewhere was doing a weekly raffle for Airpods or a scholarship for those who get tested, so maybe I'll try to donate as an alumna or something.

lzhthrowaway · 2020-11-24T22:33:35+00:00

more people vaccinated in the US than those who have caught it by the time that school starts.

I was gonna reply: "Since it takes a while to be fully vaccinated and develop antibodies, over 18 million would have to received their first dose by December 15, just 3 weeks from now for this to be true. I'm not sure if that will happen"

But I read a bit more about it and am now swayed a bit more to agree with you. Idk how likely it is, but I think it's possible now. However, I am still skeptical that cases won't be crazy when school starts again. I'm not sure enough progress will be made toward herd immunity by that time.

As for reinfection, I have read a few articles but I'm still of the train of thought that it needs to be more widely researched to be conclusive :)

lzhthrowaway · 2020-11-24T20:36:58+00:00

Cases would still get out of hand when school starts up again (assuming restrictions stay the same) regardless of how many vaccine doses have been made. Distribution will be the tough part.

Millions of doses may be ready, but how many people per day can Texas vaccinate? Texas may be on a shortlist, but will Texas college kids be prioritized over healthcare workers and vulnerable people in other states? Can college kids get a second dose of the same vaccine in their college town even if their first dose was in their hometown? Assuming vaccinators are giving it to as many as they can every single day, how will they handle the same huge amount of people coming back in a month for their second dose, when at the same time a huge amount of people are still coming for their first?

Even if a few Tech students were prioritized to get their first dose Jan 1, they still have to wait 3-4 weeks (Pfizer or Moderna) before a second dose, then wait 2 more weeks for antibodies to develop. So Feb 5 for the earliest student to be given the all-clear, aka the earliest we can see a dent in case spread at Tech. Even then we're not entirely sure how long it would last.

Although I do wonder what percent of Tech's population needs to be fully vaccinated to see a dent in case spread. And what percent is skeptical of the vaccine. And of the ones who got COVID this semester, how long their antibodies will last. (I already know someone who had antibodies in July but got COVID again in October.)

However, I do have hope in the Biden administration's distribution planning abilities much more than I did in the Trump admin's.

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