Skip to main content

Covid-19 Facts and Statistics for the General Public


The 1889 Institute has published a new webpage on its website explicitly about Covid-19. Its purpose is to provide the best current information for dealing with the pandemic to the general public and policy makers. It also tracks official new daily positive tests and daily deaths, showing trends in the data.

It seems like new information, some of it reported out of proper context or highly speculative, is being reported by authorities and researchers every day. Information provided by the Centers for Disease Control is oriented toward health professionals. We wanted to provide good information that is easily digestible.

This continues the effort that we promised in an earlier blog post. We hope the information is useful and welcome feedback.

Included on the COVID-19 webpage are:

  • A graphic showing daily positive tests/deaths and 7-day averages,
  • Who is NOT vulnerable,
  • Who IS vulnerable,
  • Information on the relationship between age and COVID-19 vulnerability,
  • How COVID-19 is transmitted from person to person,
  • Information on mask efficacy,
  • The effects of societal lockdowns,
  • Information about herd immunity and its importance,
  • Recommendations for the general public and policymakers.
All information is sourced with hyperlinks.

Byron Schlomach is Director of the 1889 Institute. He can be reached at bschlomach@1889institute.org

Popular posts from this blog

No License, Sherlock: Licensing for Private Investigators

What does a private investigator do? Surely, we’re all familiar with various movies and shows featuring the exciting adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Magnum PI. However, reality is often disappointing, and the fact is private investigation is usually dull and relatively safe. Private investigators are tasked with conducting surveillance and fact-finding missions for their clients, but they gain no special powers to do so.  My recent paper deals with the licensing of private investigators. Oklahoma’s private investigator licenses are governed by the Council of Law Enforcement Education and Training (CLEET), which follows the advice of a committee made up of people who run private investigative agencies. Improved competition is not likely to be in the best interest of these agencies, so it is questionable whether they should be in a gate-keeping position they could easily turn to their advantage. Private Investigators must undergo a series of trainings and pas...

Present Reforms to Keep the Ghost of State Questions Past from Creating Future Headaches

Oklahoma, like many western states, allows its citizens to directly participate in the democratic process through citizen initiatives and referendums. In a referendum, the legislature directs a question to the people — usually to modify the state constitution, since the legislature can change statutes itself. An initiative requires no legislative involvement, but is initiated by the people via signature gathering, and can be used to modify statute or amend the constitution. Collectively, the initiatives and referendums that make it onto the ballot are known as State Questions.   Recently, there have been calls to make it more difficult to amend the constitution. At least two proposals are being discussed. One would diversify the signature requirement by demanding that a proportional amount of signatures come from each region of the state. The other would require a sixty percent majority to adopt a constitutional amendment rather than the fifty percent plus one currently in place. ...

Senator Sanders Misses the Mark On Oklahoma Education

Minimum Wage for Teachers Senator Sanders recently wrote an op-ed for the Oklahoman. Among other radical ideas, he proposes a federal minimum wage for teachers of $60,000. In a free market, a minimum wage hurts those who earn less than the minimum wage. If they can’t produce more value than the minimum wage, they will be unemployable. For teachers, who operate in a regulated market, it will still be more difficult for inexperienced teachers to find a job. Incentives to pursue further training and education, or to take on additional roles like advising clubs or coaching sports will be diminished. Or perhaps young teachers will be required to take on one or more of these extracurricular activities to justify their higher cost.   Lost in the promise of a minimum wage is the idea that the best teachers should be paid the most. Instead, most public school teachers in Oklahoma are paid in lockstep - meaning that an outstanding teacher makes the same as a mediocre teacher wit...

Oklahoma Is OK, but Seriously, That’s Not OK

The Americans at the table, negotiating a business deal, ask one of their number, “You can speak Dutch?” He replies, “I’m OK.” With his fellow Americans looking doubtful, he proceeds to mistranslate what they want him to say to their Dutch counterparts. The “OK” translator tells the Dutch that the Americans really need a hug, when he was supposed to tell them they really need the deal. With that, the AT&T commercial ends as one of the Dutch negotiators gives an American a hug with the announcer saying, “When just OK is not OK.” There are several of these commercials, each with a different scenario, in which, indeed, just OK is not OK. And every time I see one of these commercials I think of the license plates that were once so common – “ Oklahoma is OK. ” As someone who works to develop policy suggestions intended to make Oklahoma better, and hopefully, the best that Oklahoma can be, it often seems that slogan – Oklahoma is OK – gets in the way. The fact is, in most r...