Hardy ThoughtsI’m starting with a graphic from Johns Hopkins. It shows the daily cases for the US since the beginning of the pandemic. There are two things to notice in this graph. First, the low points in May are only about a third lower than the typical rates at the peak. As the country started reopening, […]
New cases have continued to increase over the last few days, largely as anticipated. But while the nation as a whole sees slightly rising numbers, some states are rising alarmingly while others are steady or declining. Today I’m updating the list of rising and non-rising states. Here is how I see them as of this […]
National Numbers Yesterday, June 18, saw 27,762 new cases added nationally. To put this in perspective, let’s look at the national graph for new cases. About two weeks ago there was a higher spike of 29,972 cases. However, that spike was driven by a single state, Michigan, recording a backlog of over 5,000 probable cases. […]
The central point of my post on Monday was that the states with rising numbers were accelerating in such a way that their daily increase would soon outweigh the daily decrease in non-rising states, and that as a result the national numbers as a whole would soon begin to rise. There is some evidence in […]
Recently, my posts have focused on the number of cases added each day rather than on cumulative totals or percentage rates of growth. Today I’m going to return to looking at percentage rates of increases so the graphs will look a bit different than they have. Why Switch? Infections want to spread exponentially – the […]
The national numbers have been mostly steady for a couple of weeks now. However, the nation is not homogeneous. Some states are doing well, others are doing very poorly. Overall, these have balanced out over the last week. To get a clearer picture of this, I’m going to divide the country into the states with […]
Yesterday I presented a list of 6 states I thought were most worrisome regarding COVID infections. Today, the Washington Post pointed out that 14 states and Puerto Rico have seen their highest 7 day averages ever. All of the states I listed are on the Post’s list, but I want to take a minute to […]
National Overview The national number continue to rise slowly. Before I’m ready to pronounce that we’re definitely in a rising phase, there are a couple of caveats to consider. First, Mondays have typically been low points in the cycle for new cases, Sundays have been the low point for death. A strong low in todays […]
Analysis It’s not entirely clear yet, but I think we’re beginning to see the national case numbers rise. Here’s a graph to help me explain why. I’ve added lines indicating the change in the weekly peaks and valleys. As you can see, the peaks have gotten lower each week since late April. The valleys have […]
The national numbers are still in a space where they can be read in different ways. The clearest signal comes from the data on deaths. At least until a week ago, deaths were declining. Since that time they seem to have flattened. It remains to be seen whether that flattening will hold. However, given that […]