Prompted by a former colleague, I did some tedious work at the CDC site on the numbers of COVID-19 cases each day, going back to January. I found what looks like a weekly up-and-down oscillation pattern that might have to do with whether offices are open and whether reports are made promptly, or might have to be delayed until the end of the weekend. However, it does appear to me that there might be a slow, but real, downward trend over the last few weeks — mostly because the vast majority of us are practicing self-isolation. Here is the graph I made:
Clearly, we are no longer seeing either a steady increase in the number of new cases each day as we were seeing from week 6 to week 10 nor (God forbid!) exponential growth as we were seeing back in March. If we were having exponential growth, it would show up as a horizontal line in the graph below.
However, if we stop the social distancing, if we all stop wearing masks and washing hands, if we all start going to movies and restaurants and museums and bars as if this is all over, and if kids go play on playgrounds and go back to school as normal, then exponential growth will raise its ugly, feverish head, and perhaps millions will die.
By the way, I cannot easily find equivalent data on the CDC website for daily deaths; just new diagnosed cases. The COVID death data may be there, but it’s really difficult to dig out. Maybe someone has a source?
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