Yes, absolutely. Even so, and even if there is a lot of noise in the data the trend is alarming to put it mildly. With earlier testing and a more transparent picture people may have taken the warnings more serious. Now they are partying like it is 1999 and the results of that will only become visible two weeks from now. By the time tests will be more common across other populous states the USA will likely be the #1 country in the world regarding case count and the delayed response means they'll peak a lot higher than China.

This is far from over.

Please don't.

That's true.

But an actual doubling, measured by the number of people who can't breathe in a hospital currently takes 3-4 days.

Is there a reliable link to the number of people on ventilators? I've only been able to find time series data for number of deaths. Which is helpful, but way too much of a lagging indiactor.

The 'critical' column on worldometers is a starting point. The general consensus is that the deaths are the most reliable, the criticals are somewhere in the middle and verified cases the least reliable due to lack of tests. But it is hard to fudge a death.

> But it is hard to fudge a death.

Not that I think the number of cases is grossly overstated, but Italy lists deaths from coronavirus if the patient dies for ANY reason while they are afflicted by the coronavirus. This would be the source of some "fudging" of the numbers.

For the US that critical column as been way out of date (just from what I knew of one hospital vs what it was reporting for the country several days after; I don't know if it is still far out of date).

> But it is hard to fudge a death.

One country (Germany, I think?) doesn't or wasn't including people who weren't tested before dying, so had a really low rate.

I'm amazed they managed to scale testing.

The rate of spreading is still >> rate of testing

Increase of testing is 300% a day at times. For infections to increase greater than that you would need each infected individual to infected 3+ people a day. You may mean that the number of infected is still higher than the number of tests available

The only way to stop the spread is to have accurate testing and a population willing to abide by quarantine measures on a voluntary basis when tested positive as well as immediate tracing of contacts. Anything less than that and the spread will continue.

How do you know the rate of spread if you can’t test?