Tracking COVID-19 Vaccinations and Deaths

Each day I check to see how we Americans are doing on 'conquering' COVID-19 by checking with the NYTimes for The Latest Case Count and then to See How the Vaccine Rollout is Going. And on a weekly basis I get a breakdown of coronavirus cases and deaths by age group to update my blog page.  From this information I can intuit the progress the vaccinations are making towards helping us manage the pandemic in the U.S..

But I want to know more.

This is my attempt to get a handle on how vaccinations in US is affecting the number of COVID-19 related deaths by looking at the deaths and vaccinations by age group.

According to the CDC's COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States, here is a breakdown of vaccinations by age (18+ and 65+) as of June 30, 2021:

Age Group	Population	Vaccinations		Percent of Population
		1 dose	2 dose*	1 dose	2 dose*
TOTAL	332,410,303	181,339,416	155,884,601	54.6%	46.9%
18 years and older	259,016,872	172,295,929	149,112,608	66.5%	57.6%
65 years and older	54,681,549	48,223,331	42,846,087	88.2%	78.4%
* Includes J&J vaccinations

For a more granular view of the distributions of vaccinations, USA Facts have graphs showing the distribution by sex, age, and ethnicity in its article US COVID-19 Vaccine Progress. I've captured the age distribution numbers from the graph and put them in the following table:

Age Group	Percent of Population		Population	Vaccinations
	1 dose	2 dose		1 dose	2 dose
0-17 years	11.3%	8.3%	72,445,882	8,170,896	5,999,803
18-24 years	44.3%	35.9%	30,596,589	13,554,913	10,974,100
25-39 years	48.8%	41.1%	68,408,885	33,398,815	28,136,891
40-49 years	57.9%	49.7%	40,581,517	23,493,511	20,180,817
50-64 years	68.5%	60.0%	62,943,343	43,102,144	37,757,021
65-74 years	84.2%	74.8%	31,576,388	26,597,910	23,614,401
75 years and over	81.7%	72.4%	22,498,818	18,370,827	16,285,109
No age info			3,358,880	14,650,400	12,936,459
TOTAL	54.6%	46.9%	332,410,303	181,339,416	155,884,601

To examine coronavirus deaths, I started tracking the week-to-week differences from my age distribution reports. Here is a table that shows percent increase or decrease over the four weeks ending April 28 and May 29, 2021 compared to previous four weeks alongside current vaccination percentage:

COVID-19 Deaths for last 4 weeks compared to previous 4 weeks				Vaccinations administered
Age Group	% Change 4/28/21	% Change 5/26/21	% Change 6/23/21	Percent of Population
				1 dose	2 dose
0-17 years	-18%	-26%	4%	24.9%	21.7%
18-29 years	-27%	11%	-19%	43.1%	34.2%
30-39 years	-16%	4%	-24%	47.8%	39.7%
40-49 years	-27%	-4%	-28%	56.9%	48.2%
50-64 years	-32%	-3%	-35%	67.6%	58.6%
65-74 years	-40%	-12%	-36%	83.7%	74.0%
75 years and over	-41%	-15%	-40%	81.1%	71.7%
All ages	-38%	-11%	-37%	53.5%	45.36%

So what does this table tell me? On the plus side it's telling me that COVID-19 related are trending downward but there are some hiccoughs (Note: % change not negative for 0-17 for four weeks ending 6/23/21).  

5-Minute Watercolor Review

5-Minute Watercolor 

by Samantha Nielsen

2018, Quarto Publishing

A 128 page book packed full with ideas makes a good introduction to this wonderful medium. I've been looking at lots of watercolor books recently because I want to teach my grandchildren how to use watercolors. People say it's a difficult medium, and, it is, if you unreasonably expect to master it all at once. Samantha does a masterful job of serving her watercolor wisdom in 4 main meals (Chapters: Tools, Easy Techniques, Applying Your Techniques, and Take It Further), and bite size pieces within each meal.

Since I'm focused on doing individual lessons, her bite size pieces under Easy Techniques provides me with an outline for lesson plans with my granddaughters:

• Washes
• Wet-in-wet
• Blending
• Basic bloom
• Pulling from color
• Dry-brush
• Simple splatter
• Tape
• Masking fluid
• Fast ways to lift paint
• Layering and glazing
• Basic scumbling
• Paper and gravity
• Warm and cool colors
• Easy ways to gain brush control
• Ink line and watercolor wash
• Light to dark

That's 17 topics, each of which Samantha covers in a 2-page spread providing enough directions to get you started. 

Unfortunately, if you're new to watercolor you'll need a guide to get the most nutrition from Samantha's next two meals. 

Her Chapter 3, Applying Your Techniques, is packed full of good advice and pointers, but if you're looking for 'how to' instructions you'll need to go elsewhere. The internet, especially YouTube, has many show-n-tells that can provide you with needed instructions.

Her Chapter 4, Take It Further, gives you ideas for doing just that. I appreciate Samantha's closing her book with a summary of Key Elements, but it brings up a minor 'niggling' I have about her sequencing. Six of these Key Elements (Simple Shapes, Sketch It, Value, Light to Dark, Layering, and Paint It!), because they are so important, would provide a good review at the beginning of the previous chapter, Applying Your Techniques. Conversely, the first topic she covers in chapter 3 is 'What is plein air?'. Plein Air is an advanced topic and would have better placed as a great lead into Chapter 4, Take it Further. 

So, if you're looking for a pointers on how to teach watercolor, Samantha Nielsen's 5-Minute Watercolor is a good bet. If you are looking to learn watercolor, the first two chapters of her book (TOOLS and EASY TECHNIQUES) can get you started, but you'll need guidance to digest her last two, valuable chapters.

Sunday cartoon

 

The Natural Way to Draw, a review

The Natural Way to Draw: a working plan for art study by Kimon Nicolaides (1941, Houghton Muffin Company)

Kimon provides a pedological plan for a year long immersion into learning to draw. He uses the analogy of learning correct breathing before singing a song as a means to encourage readers to learn to draw before they produce “drawings" and “paintings”. There are 68 exercises for the student to do in a mindful way. The exercises are aimed toward increasing the student’s skills sequentially.

Here is a listing of his exercises for Section 1:

1. Contour - when Kimon says 'contour' in the first chapter he means what has come to be known as 'blind contour'.  The student focuses on the contour of the model, places the pencil on the paper and moves the pencil simultaneously with his eyes as his eyes trace along the model's edge.
2. Gesture - draw the action you fel as you look at the model. These are short (1 to 2 minute) drawings. Kimon suggests that you go to where people are gathered and moving to do gesture drawings (a playground, a busy walkway, etc)
3. Cross contour - the inclusion of lines that follow the contour of the form going from one side of the model's body to the other: "the line of a cross contour follows around a shape of the figure somewhat as a barrel hoop follows the rounded shape of a barrel."

He wants the art student to learn to 'see' and not just the visual world. With the gesture drawings he invites the student to draw the energy of the pose. He has other exercises for the student to draw the weight of the model and to use their pencil, crayon, charcoal, and ink to 'sculpt' the model on the page.

In addition he provides a means for the budding artist to train their imagination

1. Potential gesture - Imagine what the model will do next and draw it
2. Memory - the model takes three 320 second poses and steps down. Draw the three poses.
3. Reverse - while looking at the model, draw the model's mirror image.
4. Right angle - while looking at the model, imagine seeing him/her from a right angle to your line of sight and draw  that view
5. Back - with your back to the model, take glances over your shoulder and draw
6. Daily composition - a 15 minute gesture drawing of a scene from your past

Kimon leads the student to use various media::

1. Charcoal
2. Lithography crayon
3. Ink
4. Watercolor
5. Oil paint

He proposes that the student artist plan to do 3 hours of drawing each day, five days a week. He provides a 5 day schedule at the beginning of each section (chapter). There are 25 sections so he gives the reader a 325 hour plan for his/her course of study. Here is Kimon's Schedule 1:

	A	B	C	D	E
30 minutes	Contour  (1)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)
30 minutes	Contour  (1)	Contour  (1)	Contour  (1)	Contour  (1)	Cross Contour  (1)
15 minutes	Contour  (1)	Gestures  (15)	Gestures  (15)	Gestures  (15)	Gestures  (15)
15 minutes	Rest	Rest	Rest	Rest	Rest
30 minutes	Contour  (1)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)	Gestures  (25)
60 minutes	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)	Contour  (1 or 2)

Obviously, to take advantage of his wisdom, you'll need to incorporate these exercises into your own schedule.

Beginning with Schedule 5 he encourages you to do a Daily Composition, a small (5 X 7) memory drawing of some scene (figure(s) and context) which you witnessed in the last 24 hours. This is a fast gesture drawing taking no more than 15 minutes.

Here are some figure drawing YouTube playlists of timed art model sessions:

1. (NON-NUDE SERIES) Daily Life Drawing Sessions - fourteen 35 minute sessions
2. Friday Evening  Figure Drawing - forty-eight 1 hour or 2-1/2 hour sessions
3. Drawing Sessions - eight 35 minute sessions
4. Daily Life Drawing Sessions - eleven 25 minute sessions and twenty-three 35 minute sessions
5. Figure Drawing Sessions - six 25 minute sessions (There are 11 in the playlist, but 5 are in other playlists)
6. Human Anatomy for Artists - eleven short videos (17 seconds to 5 minutes)
7. Female Anatomy for Artists - twenty videos, six 35 minutes and the rest between 1 and 2-1/2 minutes.

This is 135 hours of drawing (Let's see, if I do 30 minutes a day for 5 days a week, it will only take me 54 weeks!)

Kimon's objective is not to have the reader learn how to draw but learn how to learn to draw. The old adage of giving someone a fish or teaching someone to fish comes to mind. It's a grand objective, but I don't think he accomplishes it. His work is well organized, purposely leading the student from exercise to exercise. He encourages the reader to take their time and be mindful (for someone like me, that means to not be task focused but look, see, and observe what is going on in front of me and differentiate that from what is going on inside of me) and from this the student may learn how to learn to draw. Good luck getting mindfulness from a book (although, I must say that the last five paragraphs of his Introduction made as much sense to me as a zen koan, which, I understand, is a key to mindfulness.)

Aside from that, the book, if it's used, is well worth the price of admission.

As of March 15, 2021, available at

Abe Books for $4.65 or $6

Thrift Books for $10 or $12

Barnes & Noble for $19