Curve Flattening?

I’m going to try to keep this an extremely short post tonight because it is late. All of this week I’ve been trying to go through all of my data files to see if the ones that I’ve been downloading and storing are actually the same set of data. I need to make room on my machine and it would be good to delete most if not all of these files.

Anyway, for the past two weeks or so, it looked like the US curve for cases, deaths, hospitalization, and positivity have hit a “temporary” peak and are starting to trend down. In some ways I’m kind of skeptical because it looked like more and more states are not consistently reporting their numbers, especially down in the South. The South are starting to show noticeable downward trends and I’m having a hard time believing it. Just Florida alone is dubious: the state has altered the report of death counts so that now it shows a dramatic decline in deaths but in actuality the deaths reporting are now being reported on the day as died rather than on the day death is finally reported (death finally reported will generally be much later than the date died – reflecting a lag time in reporting).

So I don’t know if we have a temporary reprieve before the winter onslaught or we have faulty reporting out of the South. I’m inclined towards faulty reporting.

You can see all trend lines are going down, with the South showing the strongest downward trend. You will note that the South’s case counts in the summer of 2021 far exceeded the summer of 2020 and just about neck and neck with January/February 2021. Hospitalization in summer 2021 exceeded that in January/February 2021 which was pretty high. The hospitalization could be reflecting the strong presence of the Delta variant. Finally, the South’s positivity peaked at the same high level as in the January/February 2021.

Now we are all waiting to see if the fall/winter 2021 (November/December 2021/January/February 2022) are going to be the worst surge yet.

The mask and vaccine battles are going on in full strength: it remains to be seen what will prevail.