COVID-19 July 22, 2020

The number of new infections, on average, continued to hold steady yesterday.  Will this hold? The maximum numbers for the week should start to roll in over the next few days.  If those numbers stay at or below the values from the week before then the current plateau becomes increasingly statistically significant.  For now, the total number of new infections has leveled off at about 65,000 per day. 

It is also important to remember that the national, average numbers are just that.  Early on (March and April) the numbers were dominated by the New York metro area.  Now the numbers are dominated by California, Florida, and Texas.  The fact that the national average has leveled off, at least temporarily, doesn't mean that things aren't going quickly up or down at the state or local level.  Some states with smaller populations can get lost in the mix.  As an example, Louisiana and Arizona have per capita infection numbers that are larger than California, Florida, and Texas.  Arizona seems to have leveled off in terms of new infections, but Louisiana has not.  Kansas--a low population state--still has growing infections. 

The average death rate is continuing its upward trend.  It is still more linear than exponential.  When the first wave hit the peak in deaths occurred about three weeks after the peak in infections.  If that behavior holds, we still have at least two weeks of increasing deaths until peak.  But, past performance is no guarantee of future success.