Is the positive case rate data indicating good things?

[Seinfeld]

Spent a few minutes looking through some worldwide data, and here are a few things I noticed...

The tip of the U.S. curve has been slowly rounding off for 4 days now. Are we close to seeing our peak or will it really be late Apr /early May per quite a few “experts”

Italy just had its lowest new case total in two weeks yesterday, and they’ve now gone 9 straight days below their peak from 3/21

Spain has gone 4 straight days below its peak

Germany is 3 straight days below its peak

France and UK declining as well

In short, there seem to be a lot of positive trends around the world

 

[My Bru]

I don't care when the peak is, as long as there is one. I'm just tired of listening to chicken littles because unfortunately, the hive mind listens to them thus everybody freaks out and follows the leader and cancels things until 2030.

But yeah, it appears the worldwide curve is flattening. I noticed this a few days ago.

 

[Cooterpoot]

Between 10-21 days from peak, assuming people don't get crazy.

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

based on projections it's going to peak in many areas in late april. we are just getting started with this.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

 

[My Bru]

based on projections it's going to peak in many areas in late april. we are just getting started with this.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

The great thing is most everybody is agreeing on this now. So at least there is a light and we're not just indefinitely at the mercy of the fearmongers.

 

[Trojanbulldog19]

true, many are coming around to the same thought. that graph for Mississippi is alarming though. i know many are already fatigued in Mississippi, but it's just getting started here.

 

[kired]

I noticed the rate of new daily cases in the US seems to have slowed the last few days - topping out around 20,000. But I've wondered how many tests we're capable of doing per day. Everything I've heard says only about 1 in 9 or 10 cases come back positive, so that means we're getting about 200,000 results per day. But what is our testing capacity per day? Are we at our max?

 

[My Bru]

I noticed the rate of new daily cases in the US seems to have slowed the last few days - topping out around 20,000. But I've wondered how many tests we're capable of doing per day. Everything I've heard says only about 1 in 9 or 10 cases come back positive, so that means we're getting about 200,000 results per day. But what is our testing capacity per day? Are we at our max?

One thing is for certain we are testing much more than we used to, so if cases are still flattening even with that variable, that's a very good sign.

 

[00Dawg]

Yes.

Following just those nations that instituted similar measures to our own, the pattern says our daily new infection rate should peak between 3/27 and 4/3. That roughly lines up with the peak resource usage rate projection elsewhere in this thread.

 

[turkish]

One thing is for certain we are testing much more than we used to, so if cases are still flattening even with that variable, that's a very good sign.

I’ve been afraid to be optimistic, but I have also had a hard time overlooking what you highlighted there.

 

[engie]

The 15 minute flu test for covid(essentially) isn't in the marketplace yet. That'll be another 50k units per day. Coming out of one lab.

We're between 95k and 120k tests per day nationally for the past 5-6 days now. We are nowhere near our testing capability threshold now. What I think is happening is that our prescreening for testing requirements has thusfar stayed consistent while production has consistently been ramping up. Which is still a good thing that we aren't seeing a huge spike in cases that are symptomatic on that level, but at the same time, never testing anyone that isn't a higher than normal risk to others or experiencing complications. Still can bet there is probably 20-50x as many actual cases out there as there are people testing positive.

It made sense to me logically to slowly remove the strings on the prescreening requirements as more tests went online, but unless something changes drastically in the next week or so with that, my guess is they wait until basically anyone that wants a test can get one. Self tests starting to be made now.

 

[codeDawg]

based on projections it's going to peak in many areas in late april. we are just getting started with this.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections

That's a pretty interesting model. It's consistent with what I've seen in other places and what I think is going to happen from the peak. I believe the hospitals in most metro areas are going to start running short on capacity in the next 2-3 weeks. The Nashville officials are predicting the same.

I would be very happy to see the curve go down that quickly, but I have my doubts that it will. Looking at the really dense areas that have dealt with this, it flattens, but does not drop that dramatically. Now we are going to start seeing it in less dense areas, so maybe it will for those. With social distancing we're pushing the total number of cases out over a longer timeframe, but it's difficult to calculate if that will actually reduce the total number of cases before a medical treatment / vaccine is introduced.

I think there is a dramatic drop in cases 6-8 weeks out as herd immunity takes hold. Again, not a model, but napkin math guess.

I tried to do some research on tracking lower density populations but I don't think the data exists yet. High density areas are who are getting hit first because they have the highest number of transmissible opportunities. Lower density areas will behave differently, but I don't think we know what that looks like.