Interesting. I hadn’t looked into 85755 much because it had a low cases per 1K rate. It shows about 50% growth because it went from 33 cases to 50 in just a couple of days. So maybe not interesting yet (I plan to re-run the zip code data at the end of the week… we’ll see if they’re still increasing). There definitely seems to be more emphasis on masks in places like Whole Foods than Frys… that might be an interesting thing to measure! Might explain a lesser adherence to the mask policy in the OV… 🙂

Yes, I’m struggling with ventilation too… it would be a very interesting modality but yes, it seems far fetched. The one thing I think about is if the virus aerosolizes more than we expect (which I’ve seen papers indicating this might be the case) that could explain superspreaders and other weird things.

As per mask wearing… we have an interesting social experiment going on now. We know when lockdown started and ended and now we know when mandatory masks started. If I could find a reasonably populous county (Pinal?) that isn’t mandating masks, then we might learn something. I expect the AZ numbers will be turned over in about a week due to the mask mandates. Already seeing the trend start…

Couple of points I noticed:
85755 in Tucson in your list is not what I would call a lower-income area as that is in Oro Valley – so perhaps an outlier on that list. I will say having gotten take-out in the area (as it’s not far from me) I noticed little mask usage and the average age there tended to be in the 45-65 age range I would guess of the patrons I saw packing a bar or sitting indoors at a restaurant to eat, all unmasked.

I had thoughts about the ventilation issue too and looked at a number of papers and recent articles, but the point I can’t get around is – it’s still influenced by introducing COVID-19 into the area with poor circulation. Having poor circulation or filtration in your home isn’t enough to contract COVID-19 if it isn’t introduced to the environment – so there are behaviors that are still not necessarily low risk (lack of mask wearing or social distancing) that has to still be involved with a filtration/circulation method for contraction.

Thoughts?

Hey Chad. Yes, but it takes a ton of work. The state does not have good data available, so I’m having to pull data by hand from various web sites. I think there’s an age factor in the Foothills (65+ people BETTER be wearing their masks) but also a political identity issue. I suspect the reason the 65+ case growth trend is basically linear (compared to any other age group) is due to face mask usage. We’ll see their impact in about 10-14 days as we start to see data post-mask-mandate.

T.

Interesting post. I was curious if this median income data could somehow be combined with median age data. I too have noticed much more mask diligence in the Foothills than the rest of the city (prior to the mandate). I’ve anecdotally attributed this to the age of the Foothill residents (I don’t even know for sure the Foothills has an older median age). As you’ve said before mask usage seems to have a definite political discriminant, but also an age discriminant. The thought would be that older people seem to be more likely to wear a mask, therefore leading to a lower infection rate in communities with a higher median age.

Take care and thanks,
Chad