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| Social Distancing |
Everybody has their favorite measure of what is happening with the progress of COVID-19 in the United States: new cases, percentage testing positive, new hospitalization, new ICU admissions, new deaths, etc. Since COVID has become a political issue, the measure selected often depends on your political party.
My preferred measure is new deaths ... which it seems should be a lagging indicator ... but, I suspect is now a leading one ... due to the rapid increase in testing, possible mutations in the virus itself or possibly even better therapeutics. Nonetheless, this is my preferred metric ... see: Washington Post Graphic.
These numbers there suggest to me, despite what one reads or sees in the media, the opening up of our economy seems to be moving apace.
We shall see.
2 comments:
Looking at the charts, Reported new cases on Mondays are usually the lowest in any 7 day reporting period, but yesterday June 22 they shot upward. Deaths continue to decline so that is a good trend.
My guess is that new cases are increasing in the younger population that has resumed gathering in crowds. They are showing less likelihood to die from the virus, but let's hope they do not become super-spreaders to their more vulnerable relatives and neighbors.
Many believe that heard immunity (50-60%) is inevitable. We are getting there. Let’s just hope this is mostly among the young.
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