Previous Editions: Covid 5/14: Limbo Under, Covid-19 5/7: Fighting Limbo, Covid-19 4/30: Stuck in Limbo, My Covid-19 Thinking: 4/23 pre-Cuomo Data

I remember when people on Twitter had constant reminders that today was, indeed, only Wednesday, or whatever day it happened to be. Time moved that slowly.

Time has sped up again. It has been two weeks since my last Covid-19 post, and that’s because I didn’t feel there was much new to say. There aren’t new developments. People are acting the way you’d expect them to act, the numbers are continuing on their trend lines.

The question is, will it be good enough? Did we win? Will there be a second wave soon as we open things up?

So far, the news is mostly good. But not great. Let’s see the numbers.

The Numbers

New positive tests by region:

Date	WEST	MIDWEST	SOUTH	NE ex-NY	NY
Mar 19-Mar 25	5744	6293	7933	8354	28429
Mar 26-Apr 1	15684	20337	24224	34391	52901
Apr 2-8	19455	31148	39618	56772	65604
Apr 9-15	16291	29267	35570	61921	64463
Apr 16-22	20065	34130	33932	64669	43437
Apr 23-29	21873	42343	33773	62189	42475
Apr 30-May 6	23424	49205	37880	51693	24287
May 7-May 13	22615	43256	37591	40209	16683
May 14-May 20	22913	42762	40343	39273	13709
May 21-May 27	24104	39418	42977	28336	10595

Deaths by region:

	WEST	MIDWEST	SOUTH	NE ex-NY	NY
Mar 19-Mar 25	116	67	111	84	203
Mar 26-Apr 1	347	477	502	454	1340
Apr 2-8	639	1335	1215	1783	3939
Apr 9-15	895	2106	1472	3261	5345
Apr 16-22	1008	2369	1730	5183	3994
Apr 23-29	1135	2500	1684	4285	2810
Apr 30-May 6	991	2413	1737	5349	2007
May 7-May 13	1044	2344	1679	4014	~1500
May 14-May 20	1091	2071	1448	3712	998
May 21-May 27	823	1694	1276	2430	721

Positive test rates:

Date	USA tests	Positive %	NY tests	Positive %
Mar 19-Mar 25	347,577	16.2%	88,882	32.0%
Mar 26-Apr 1	728,474	20.2%	117,401	45.1%
Apr 2-8	1,064,225	19.8%	144,273	45.5%
Apr 9-15	1,026,741	20.4%	160,859	40.1%
Apr 16-22	1,235,393	16.1%	143,970	30.2%
Apr 23-29	1,552,560	13.0%	202,499	21.0%
Apr 30-May 6	1,759,548	10.6%	183,446	13.2%
May 7-May 13	2,153,748	7.5%	202,980	8.2%
May 14-May 20	2,643,333	6.0%	246,929	5.6%
May 21-May 27	2,584,265	5.7%	305,708	3.5%

New York continues to improve. Some time in this past week, I believe New York became a safer than average place in terms of forward looking infection risk, with yesterday’s positive rate down to 2.7%, and my best guess for today being only 5,000 infections statewide. That’s down 96% from my estimate of the peak infection rate.

The rest of the Northeast also is seeing clear improvement.

Alas, the rest of the nation is looking more mixed. The death rates continue to improve, but that only tells us that things were good weeks ago. The third week of May is clearly an improvement on test results across regions, as the increase in tests run makes up for the positive counts.

The fourth week is troubling. With the reopening well underway, we see the West and South moving backwards, while the Midwest is on the edge. With activity only increasing, and with the added danger of civil unrest, it seems plausible that three of our four major regions are headed in the wrong direction.

This could easily be a blip. The changes are not that big. It also might not be a blip.

Our testing outside of New York is also going in the wrong direction. Hopefully this is due to the disruption of Memorial Day weekend, and we’ll continue to see improvements going forward.

Narratives of a sudden huge spike were never on the table. People aren’t radically adjusting their behaviors all at once and returning to how things were before. People are slowly adopting to a new normal. If that new normal is insufficient to contain Covid-19, we’ll know it because we see a slow uptick a week after the adjustments get too aggressive.

There was another adjustment made on Memorial Day. The results of that should be visible in a few days time. A lot of the additional activity is outdoors, which is relatively safe. But there was also almost certainly a rise in social gatherings indoors as well, and that is the most unsafe thing out there right now.

I hope the dumb reopening succeeds and we can avoid a second wave and the economy can begin to recover without a lot more people first having to die. Certainly things up until this recent blip are going about as well as one might reasonably have hoped.

I’ve split off my more detailed current thoughts into another draft that I hope to have ready in a day or two.