These are getting harder and harder to write. The data is problematic at best. The media emphasis and interpretation does not even rise to the level of problematic. As the politics increasingly ignores anything like science or rational thought, I find it less and less useful to even try for a reasonable interpretation of the data that I find even somewhat trustworthy.
First, despite what you may get from the media, the pandemic is not getting worse. As an epidemic in the US, it no longer even meets the CDC criteria for being an epidemic.
Second, despite the increasing number of positive tests, the death rate (CFR) continues to fall. Almost every 7 day MA since mid-April at least has seen a lower MA in the CFR. Or at least little to no increase.
Third, the media continues to ignore the death rate, but hypes “new deaths” (particularly in “surge” states) when “old deaths” are lumped in with them. (Did you know that FL and AZ, both with “record numbers of new deaths” actually have falling numbers of new deaths WHEN THE DEATHS ARE RECORDED BY DATE OF DEATH?)
Fourth, it is now established that not all testing labs are reporting negative results, so the infection rate is probably very wrong. In addition there are several cases where incorrect (usually inflated) numbers of positive tests are reported.
Fifth, the reporting standards of COVID-related death is so loose as to be useless. Check the CDC on that. (Assuming a COVID death: “a March 24 CDC memo from Steven Schwartz, director of the Division of Vital Statistics for the National Center for Health Statistics, titled “COVID-19 Alert No. 2.” “The assumption of COVID-19 death,” she says, “can be made even without testing. Based on assumption alone the death can be reported to the public as another COVID-19 casualty.””)
As for data. Well. Strictly speaking, even given the crap mentioned above, once you have 'cleaned' the data (like moving “new deaths” to the date the death was recorded instead of the date it was reported) it is obvious that whatever surge or Second Wave may have been happening has petered out. The only areas I could find with actual surges were places where there were (and are, still) influxes of border-crossing patients (google McAllen, TX for a good example. The head of the largest hospital there is very careful to say his ICUs are filling up with “Mexican nationals”. I don't blame them for wanting to go there for treatment, but he didn't say “US nationals living in Mexico” or “green card holders” and I'm betting that was for a reason. The same appears to be true in AZ and probably SoCal. There has been a small 'surge' in AR from a very low base that may be due to an influx of migrant farm laborers.) Also we're seeing upticks in Seattle and Portland, especially (in the county data) where there have been pretty much continuous protests for the past 60 days or so. Maybe the virus can't really tell whether you're in church or in the streets.
Adjust for date of death and the new deaths are dropping almost everywhere. If you use date of recorded death and not date of reported death than we are now again down to 600 or so deaths per day. That's back to near the low since March. In Michigan 3 of the past 7 days (I had to dig to find this) have had no new deaths recorded on those days, but 2-9 or so reported. Maybe they're running out of “plausible” COVID deaths to record. It's still a headline when there are 600 NEW CASES!!!! IN MI, but they soft-pedal “only 1 (actual) new death”.
The infection rate continues to hover across the US at about 8%. That is probably a bit high since many positive patients are re-tested until they test negative. Twice in the past 10 days the rate has dipped to 7%. That may be a prelude to a true Second Wave this fall/winter, but right now I'd bet if we have one it will be much less than the March-May wave we had.
The CFR has declined from just over 11% on April 15 to 3.3% currently. The decrease has been essentially linear. Meanwhile we are now conducting an average of around 3/4M tests every day and have done over 52M tests, total. Since April 15 the % testing positive (out of 200K tests) declined steadily (as the number of tests rose to 300K/day) to 4% the around mid-June (as the number of tests began rising steadily to the current 750K/day) to 9% then levelled off at 8%. During that same period, hospitalizations declined from 4/15 to 6/15 then rose to about 50% of the 4/15 level now. (That data is shaky because until late May only 35 or so states were providing hospitalization numbers, but it looks like a decent estimate.) Meanwhile deaths declined steadily, both on real numbers and as a % of hospitalizations. We're finding a great many more more mild and asymptomatic cases as well as having better treatments.
Meanwhile, new, good data that shows that HCQ and zinc as well as other treatments, when given early, are very useful in mitigating the effects of the virus. That, oddly, is not being given much coverage in the media.
Across the US only NJ/NY/MA/CT – 1789/1681/1238/1239 have more than 1000/1M population deaths, CA has now overtaken NY for the most cases, 467K to 440K, but the CA death rate is only 216/1M and it has twice the population of NY. TX/FL/GA, all excoriated by the media have death rates of 181/276/330. You tell me who is doing COVID policy best.
Meanwhile, COVID cases are starting to appear in Europe again.
Maybe we can get a decent vaccine, but remember the best flu vaccines we have only seem to reduce cases by half most of the time. And coronaviruses tend to mutate rapidly, which is one big reason we don't have a vaccine for the common cold, and maybe we can get some kind of herd immunity. But the odds are that we're going to have to live with COVID for quite some time. Will we do it huddled in hypothetically “safe spaces” or out in the open? Will individuals get to make choices, or will the behaviors be forced “for the good of all”? Important questions I think.
Here are some links for further reading if you want pretty charts and more discussion on the points I've mentioned.
FL Covid Dashboard : https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/27/florida-is-a-case-study-in-media-induced-covid-19-panic/
Europe Surge : https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/07/25/france-spain-germany-suddenly-facing-new-coronavirus-surge/
More likely to contract COVID at home : https://news.yahoo.com/people-more-likely-contract-covid-122611396.html
Lockdowns effective or not? : https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/07/were-the-lockdowns-effective-at-all.php
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