Friday, June 26, 2020

COVID-19: Memphis/Shelby County Updates

Memphis/Shelby County COVID-19 Updates


 Back in mid-April, a month into sheltering in place, when it became clear that we were not going to contain the novel coronavirus, I decided to start tracking the local data myself. 

 At the time, there just wasn't much information, even less thoughtful analysis, and it was difficult to figure out what was going on. So I built a few spreadsheets, created a handful of visualizations to help "see" the data trends, and started writing weekly Twitter threads with my analysis. 

 Why should you care about my analysis?

 That's a good question. I'm no epidemiologist. But I do have a graduate degree in ethics, where I did a lot of work around biomedical ethics. (Doing work around biomedical ethics and disability is actually how I ended up with a career in special education, by the way.) And so I do have some expertise in how to think about, how to weigh pros and cons around, public health.

 And I have a passion for data, for "seeing" trends, making connections, and then painting a story of what's there. I find it helpful, for myself, to do this. Over time, after I did data projects on the side at work, it was added to my official duties. It's just how my mind works. I can't even help it. So, on the one hand, I do this for myself. 

 And so, as my curiosity led me to dive deeply into understanding the coronavirus pandemic, it just made sense for me to start building spreadsheets and visualizations and to start writing my analysis. This is just what I do - whether at work, at church, at home, wherever. 

But others have found my analysis helpful. Many others, in fact. The first update had over 2,000 impressions and nearly 600 engagements, already about 200 times higher than normal tweets. And those numbers grew to 15,000 and 3,000 for the last update.

 I mention that just to say that it seems like people appreciate my analysis. And so I offer it as a public service. 

 The public service aspect is the real reason I put my analysis out each week. And the reason I think it's needed - the real reason you should care about what I have to say - is because the public is not getting the full story from our local officials.

Analyzing the data, I've noticed the ways our elected officials have not always been honest with us and have not always made public health a priority. And so it is my hope that my analysis can inform the public discussion so that we can hold our elected officials accountable.

On this note, check out the op-ed I wrote for the Daily Memphian. (Read it here.) My goal here was to move beyond analysis to advocacy, defining a clear public policy goal and trying to shape the conversation in our community.


I was also interviewed by the Memphis Flyer a few weeks earlier. (Read the interview here.)

I'll note here that I made my first public projection - not to be confused with prediction - when the Flyer interviewed me on July 2. The day before, total cases had just reached 10,000. Looking at trends and growth rates at the time, I projected that we would reach 20,000 total cases by August 1. We hit 20k on July 29, three days early. I think that confirms my analysis.


So that's who I am and what I'm trying to accomplish. The other question you might want to know is where my analysis comes from and what my methodology is.

 My data comes straight from the Shelby County Health Department. Each day at 10:00am, they update case counts and reported tests. And so each day, I pull those two numbers and plug them into my spreadsheet. I just pull the total number of cases and the total number of tests, just the most basic raw data. 

 Once I've got the data, the spreadsheets do a lot of the work. I've written formulas to look calculate the number of new cases per day, a 7-day rolling average of new cases per day, new cases per week, average new cases per day per week, and then all of those for testing data too.

I didn't have access to testing data at first, but once I got that I used case counts and testing data to write formulas to calculate the positivity rate overall, per day, on a five-day rolling average, and per week. And then I created visualizations for each of these. 

After a while, I started playing with different time parameters to look at the data since reopening in Phase 1, since moving to Phase 2, since July 4 weekend, and more. I've also started looking at daily growth rate, as well as 7-day and 14-day growth rates. I've added a visualization comparing 14-day growth rates for cases versus tests.

Then I started using growth rate trends to project out - not predict - what cases might look like in the future.

And then I created visualizations around the metrics used by Harvard's Global Health Institute and Center for Ethics. The first is looking at positivity rates and testing to show our current status, as well as how many daily tests we'd need to be doing to get below 10%, 5%, and 3% positive. And then the other is around case rates, using the Harvard benchmarks of 1, 10, and 25 daily cases per 100,000 people.
Every Saturday, I spend a couple hours analyzing the data and writing my analysis in a series of 280-character tweets. I've also added a mid-week report as well. These are usually about 25 tweets long. But each day, I've started posting daily updates.

 I wanted to archive my analysis here in one place, both for myself and also for transparency. Anyone who wants to go back to check my work can do so - and can do so easily. I think my analysis is pretty solid, but I know that I'm missing some context because I don't have all the data the health department has. And I welcome feedback. (I am grateful to the Twittersphere for offering some ideas early on that helped shape the way I thought about and presented the data thereafter.) If you have any thoughts or suggestions or context to add, I welcome feedback. Just shoot my a message via Twitter. 

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Sunday, June 7, 2020

The Blood of Abel is Crying Out From the Ground, Redux: #BlackLivesMatter

NOTE: I wrote this piece four years ago, after a brutal four days that saw police kill Alton Sterling and Philando Castille, followed by a sniper killing four officers, followed by police arming a robot with a bomb to kill the sniper.

 Four years later, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. And so I thought I would republish this piece. #AhmaudArbery #BreonnaTaylor #GeorgeFloyd #DavidMcAtee
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The Blood of Abel is Crying Out From the Ground: #BlackLivesMatter
James Aycock, July 13, 2016

The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve', William Blake, c.1826 | Tate
"Cain Fleeing From the Wrath of God (The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve)," by William Blake

I've been teaching on Genesis for the past month. Two weeks ago, we discussed the beginning of the Cain and Abel story, found in Genesis 4.1-7, just before Cain killed Abel, his brother.
And then a Black man in Baton Rouge was killed by police officers. Another Black man was killed by police officers in a suburb of St. Paul. And then in Dallas a sniper shot and killed five police officers, wounding several others. And then the Dallas police decided to send a robot with a bomb to blow up the sniper.
All of a sudden, our text took on a new meaning. The story of Cain and Abel had just played out in the news cycle, day after day after day.

So here's a recap of my Sunday School lesson, plus a little ‪‎#BlackLivesMatter‬ preaching...

Cain kills Abel, his brother, in verse 8. Just like that, in one brief verse, Abel is dead.
And when God comes asking where Abel is, Cain gives that classic response: "Am I my brother's keeper?"
We can read this as Cain redirecting the question of responsibility back at God. Maybe Cain is not just avoiding his own responsibility, but asking God to take responsibility. And this is something we understand.
We often wonder why God doesn't intervene, why God allows murder to happen.
Why, God, didn't you step in to keep Philando Castile alive? Why, God, didn't you step in to keep Alton Sterling alive? Why, God, didn't you step in to keep those officers in Dallas alive?
But I'm reminded here that the call for us to love God, who we can't see, is translated into a call to love our neighbor, who we can. It is our responsibility to be the hands and feet of God.
Of course we're our brother's keeper!
And our sister's too!
It's our responsibility to watch out for our brothers and sisters, to keep them safe, to ensure that they aren't killed.
And God's response is interesting. Listen, says God, the blood of Abel is crying out from the ground.
There is so much good news here. There is no one to protest for Abel's murder - there's no witness, no one to video on their cell, and of course Cain is not wearing a bodycam - and yet the blood of Abel cries out to God nonetheless.
Even more, God hears, God listens, God responds.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that, just like God hears the cry of the silenced Abel, God hears the cry of the silenced Philando Castile, the silenced Alton Sterling, the silenced Dallas police officers, and too many more to name. Their blood cries out to God.
And I think we can extend that to say that God hears the cries of those without a voice in our society, those who are still alive but whose voices have been silenced.
God listens, even when our elected officials ignore the call for justice. God listens...
And you don't even have to occupy a bridge to make God listen. God is paying attention before it gets to that.
As progressive white folks, we like to think of ourselves as the enlightened ones. We would never act as the two officers did last week. We would never be Cain and murder our brother.
But look at verse 7. Very calmly, God offers a rational case for Cain to collect himself and do the right thing. You haven't done anything wrong, and you can still choose the right path, God says, just be careful because sin is waiting to ambush you.
But Cain is just not in a rational place.
How many of us have acted without thinking? Who hasn't acted on impulse? Who hasn't looked back in regret after letting our emotions get the best of us? We all have.
That is Cain. He's a sympathetic figure in verses 1-7. He's set up as a good guy. (Don't believe me? Go back and read the story for yourself. He didn't do anything wrong.) He has every reason to be upset. But sin - and notice that, here, the first time sin is mentioned in the Bible, it's described not as doing the wrong thing, but as a force outside of us - is waiting to ambush him.
And that's exactly what happens. God tells Cain that he can control sin, but instead sin controls him.
I offer a parallel here. The officers who killed Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were probably good guys. Like Cain. If they could, I'm sure they would take it back. Like Cain. But I don't think they made rational choices, but rather acted in the moment. Like Cain.
My first three years of teaching were in Frayser, in one of the most violent schools in the city. The year before I got there, there were over 160 fights in 180 school days. A few years before that, a young man was killed in the restroom. It was chaos, and I'd never seen anything like it.
We did a lot of good things at that school. We cut fights by half the first year. And then the next year fights were halved again. Every sports team made it to the playoffs. My class protested the death of Trayvon Martin at the entrance of our awards ceremony when the school board president was our guest of honor. There was a sense of pride, both within the school and in the community. And academic proficiency increased from 5% to 18%. Students with disabilities outperformed their non-disabled peers at 25%. Things were really turning around.
But some things I saw made me very uncomfortable. And yet I fell in line. I didn't speak up. Looking back, it terrifies me to even think about some of the ways I acted then.
I have a graduate degree in ethics - I am quite literally a master of right action. And yet...
The point being, in the wrong culture, there is a force that can take over even the best of us.
We are Cain.
Very easily, we could be those police officers too.
The hard truth, though, according to Genesis 4, is that sin is not so much something inside of us, but a force that is outside of us and beyond us. It has a life of its own. And that makes it so much more difficult to control.
It's embedded in the political system we participate in - and so we participate in it. It's embedded in the religion we practice - and so we practice it too. It's embedded in the news we consume - and so we consume it. It's in the very air we breath - and so we breath it in.
But Cain could control it, said God. And that means that we can too. And if we can control it, then by all means we must. Because there is too much blood crying out from the ground.
When it controls us, though, the good news is that God will not let go, will not give up, but will follow us even unto the land of Nod.
Cain went on to found the first city. His descendants were the first to discover art and culture and technology. They took the very same passion and emotion that Cain felt, and they channeled it into something productive and life-giving. Thanks be to God.
But they also continued killing. As do we today.
We can control it, says God. And so we must.
Those who have been silenced are crying out and asserting control over the forces in our society that have silenced them for years - and would keep them silenced.
They asserted control over a bridge. I was there. It was peaceful. It was nonviolent. But they controlled that bridge. And, as a result, they are on the path to control the force that is sin.
God heard them all along. But now, finally, their elected officials are listening. And so they are asserting control over the political process.
God heard them all along. But now, finally, religious leaders are listening. And so they are asserting control over religious institutions.
God heard them all along. But now, finally, the news media is listening. And printing public apologies. And so they are asserting control over how the narrative is reported.
As white folks, we must do our part.
We must stand up and affirm that #BlackLivesMatter. We must be part of the movement.
And yet, just like Stokely Carmichael told one of my Baptist heroes, Will Campbell, back in the '60s, we must get to work on our white brothers and sisters. We can't just abandon them because they don't understand why it's so important to say #BlackLivesMatter or why it's important to occupy a bridge. We must be the bridge that helps them understand.
And, as white folks, we must be willing to not be in control for once. We must be willing to check our privilege.
Listen! Abel's blood is crying out. May we listen to what it has to say. And may we not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Thanks be to God.
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