Changes coming to the COVID data you get

A few weeks ago, the publisher and I decided to re-evaluate our daily package of coronavirus pandemic briefs, thinking there might be a more effective use of our time and news space.

We began publishing them in March 2019, the week the pandemic created a state of emergency and the economy and facilities began shutting down. The idea was to keep you up to date on how critical services would be provided, who might provide them, and how you could cope.

As time passed and information became consistently available, we added to that data that might help you make a decision: whether to go out; where you might go; how fast the virus was spreading and how hard it hit the greater Cortland area. When available, we gave you details about vaccination clinics and rates.

Much of that information came from the state Department of Health, information you can find at https://tinyurl.com/2mxxwwmb. The rest came from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at https://tinyurl.com/mr2w3u36.

But Tompkins County reports the state is cutting back to weekly updates. And if the state is doing that, then our ability to get you up-to-date information is limited. That's forcing our hand.

I don't know what information we'll be able to get you, or on what schedule. But if my extended family and email from readers is any guide, we'll be looking for certain facts to help you decide how to keep yourself and the people close to you safe:

• The number of cases: Readers tell me they would prefer to know the number of active cases, just to see how prevalent COVID-19 is in a community. That data haven't been available for nearly a year, in part because some sick people don't report it. However, we've been publishing the number of new confirmed cases, and we'll continue to look for that, even if it's on a weekly basis.
  
  
• Infection rate: This is the number of people who contract the virus over a week, as a ratio of the population. This is as close as we can get to the number of active cases, and the best barometer for how widespread COVID-19 is in any given community.
  
  
• Risk: This information comes from the CDC, and is already updated weekly. It takes into account the number of cases in a county, rate of spread, hospitalizations and the capacity of hospitals and other health providers to care for those people. If you're looking for information on how likely you are to be exposed to coronavirus, this isn't so precise. But if you're looking for information on how well your community can help you through it, this is good stuff. It's also a really good guide to communities you might want to avoid, or take extra precautions when visiting, such as masking in public places.
  
  
• Vaccination rates: Herd immunity is a thing. As more people are vaccinated against a virus — measles, chicken pox or COVID-19 — the slower the virus spreads. So we'll look for information to show what ratio of the population is vaccinated, on the theory that places where the vaccination rate is higher are safer to travel to.

We’ll drop the number of tests administered from our list of metrics. I've stuffed so many cotton swabs up my nose over the past three years that I never reported to a health agency — as you probably have — that the number of tests is no longer a good barometer of anything.

I'm also not so concerned about the total number of hospitalizations over the three-year pandemic. For policy makers, that data might be useful in assessing how a community has dealt with the virus, but I don't think it helps you decide how to make yourself safer.

Of professional concern to me is the difference between the number of people who've completed the two-shot vaccination course — about 59% in Cortland County — and the number who are up to date with boosters, about 14%. Seems to me that latter number is a good barometer of how many people are ready to cope with COVID in the future.

As soon as we see how public reporting sources will change, we'll respond accordingly. So keep watching.

Todd R. McAdam is managing editor of the Cortland Standard. He can be reached at tmcadam@cortlandstandard.com.