COVID-19 June 05, 2020

Another fairly short post today.  Trends continue to do their thing without much surprise.  I am watching a few states out of the corner of my eye: Texas, North Carolina, Florida.  These states look to breaking out ahead of the pack.  I'm also watching Puerto Rico, which is showing some possibly troubling numbers.  PR is particularly concerning because our fellow citizens have been hit so hard from natural disasters and the federal government doesn't care much for its brown, Spanish speaking citizens.

COVD-10 June 05, 2020

Same as yesterday.  Just plodding along.  Happy National Donut Day.

COVID-19 June 04, 2020

No real changes from yesterday.  Stay safe and don't let your guard down.  Although we no longer have the explosive growth we saw in early March, the number of new cases is not decreasing.  More importantly, there are currently more people infected that at any time in the past.  Going strictly by numbers, each day that goes by your chance of infection increases, at least if you're out there mixing it up with society.  On the other hand, mask use and general awareness may make a big enough dent in transmission probability that the risk of infection could be lower than in the past even though the overall number of cases is still growing.  In any case, this is no time for complacency.

COVID-19 June 03, 2020

Yesterday's death toll came in higher than the Gompertz model (again) and is clearly indicating a change in the slow decrease that we've seen for a month or more.  It's now flat if not slightly increasing.  The next few days should be when the highest numbers for the week roll in.  Unless they are much lower than expected, it's hard to see how this new trend is going to reverse. 

Meanwhile, the daily new infections are still bouncing at or just above 20,000 per day.  There is a slight indication of an increase in the rate in 7-day average, but not enough to call it a reversal of the trend.  For context, we are currently at daily rates that are comparable to what they were at the end of March.  On the other hand, the peak 7-day average was just a bit over 30,000 in early April.  So, while things have improved compared to the peak, the numbers are still high, and this is after the fairly austere policies that have been in place for months.

COVID-19 June 02, 2020

I've been waiting for/wondering when the death rate would start to flatten in concert with the number of new cases.  New cases have been nearly flat with only a very slow decrease for weeks.  I'm not quite ready to make the call, but the 7-day average of death rates appears to have departed from the Gompertz model curve.  As I've said repeatedly, you can't really look at daily numbers and even the 7-day average can be squirrely.  It could very well turn around in the next day or two, but if not...well, the long-awaited response in death rates has arrived.  Will the orange 7-day average in the daily plot continue to diverge from the red Gompertz curve? 

COVID-19 June 01, 2020

New month, same pandemic.  Nothing really new.  A few states continue to report record or near-record numbers of new infections.  Still, the overall numbers for the country as a whole are relatively flat, which indicates that while some are going up others are going down.  Deaths continue to slowly decrease.

COVID-19 May 31, 2020

There is nothing remarkable on this last day of May.  If I try really hard, I might find a hint of death rates failing to fall as fast as the model suggests that they should.  I'm not going to make this call just yet, but it's something I'm watching.  Since the number of new cases has been falling very slowly, I'd expect the deaths to mirror that with a lag.  Perhaps that's starting to happen.  Perhaps.  I'm also seeing an increasing number of states setting records for the largest number of new cases.  I'm not going to get too excited about that either.  Not yet.  As testing increases, we might expect a larger number of confirmed cases.  On the other hand, it probably also means that the spread of the virus isn't exactly waning.  So, there's a couple of things to watch.

to watch over the next week or two.