Cdc

Since mid-July 2020 in Maryland, we understood that the 20-59 yr age group was problematic, especially the 20-29 yr age group that is racing to overtake all age groups in terms of number of COVID-19 cases (relative to their population, see top chart below). In terms of COVID-19 hospitalizations, we also saw a small rebound (see chart below; it seems that it subsides since beginning of August). But what we didn’t know (for this small peak as well as since the beginning) was what is the age of these hospitalized populations. Did these hospitalizations impacted more the older adults? The younger ones? Or the children? The Maryland Department of Health COVID-19 dashboard doesn’t report that information (nor in the API). ...

According to CDC data, studies are getting better at estimating the influenza vaccine effectiveness. With the 2017-2018 flu season still going on in the USA, there are already some indication that vaccines have some effectiveness (although its target strains were mismatched). The CDC reports how it measures vaccine effectiveness here and I was interested in their confidence intervals (the interval that takes into account uncertainties to extrapolate to the broader, unknown population). ...

As you probably know I am interested in both diseases (and health in general) as well as visualization. Recently Online Nursing Programs (*) invited me to have a look at their latest infographics about the effects of tobacco on health ( directly to figure). Although numbers seem correct (references are at the bottom), although they intelligently re-use the presentation of some well-known tobacco companies, there is one thing that I don’t like that much: like this sentence, the figure is very, very long. You have to scroll many pages in order to see everything. It may look like a story but it is not presented as such (I mean: there are no clear marks of different steps in the story, except the three “chapters”). On the right is the complete figure in exactly 800 pixels of height - can you read something? GOOD.is solved this issue by using a Flash player that allows the viewer to woom in/out and go to different sections of the figure ( see here for instance). ...

In an IT World article, Tom Henderson gives many details about a US-government-led CDC-like organisation to fight malware. In summary, he states that companies and consultants providing security and prevention around operating systems don’t have any real motivation to eradicate malware. And in case of an “outbreak” of these malware, he added one needs a US government body to look after every computer “health”, coordinate the surveillance and the response. He even pushes the comparison with the human medical system by introducing a Hippocratic Oath for computer healthcare. ...

From Delicious, I saw that Yahoo had an article about the top 5 killers of men. I thought it would be nice to see from where they get there data. First, I have to mention that the article is really about American men, nothing else (not about mankind, not about men around the world, not about women, children, etc.). The article is related to the US National Men’s Health Week (the US National Women’s Health Week was in May 8-14, 2011). Although the article is giving advices, there are no sources of information. ...