> Our lockdowns were a disaster and "opening back up" is going to cause an explosion in cases.

That was in fact the prediction for Georgia, see for example the expert predictions here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/infectious-disease-expe...

Of course it turns out not to have actually happened: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/georgia-coronavi...

As far as I saw from the start, predictions for Georgia were that they'd start to see an uptick in about 3-5 weeks. I think that window starts this week.

You can read the article I linked, the predictions were for the week ending May 16.

It has largely been within that consensus range at the low end: "579 and 2,292"; but that's splitting hairs, since the low end is not an increasing count.

With that said, my own reading prior to this point has suggested we'd see the uptick starting in this coming week, through the next two weeks.

Georgia is now backfilling based on date of first symptoms, rather than date of diagnosis. Numbers as far back as a week or two week could still increase.

That's not completely true.

The panel of experts estimated about 1k/day during the week ending May 16, ranging 579/day to 2292/day.

And while so far there aren't that many cases reported today, the data isn't complete due to the lag in testing results. In fact the lag is for 14 days. So we're still in a wait and see point.

The 579/day estimate is the low end of the 90% confidence interval. You can use the 7-day rolling average the NYT provides to eliminate the swings from reporting variance. Of course, the apocalypse will always be two weeks away.

90% confidence means anything within that range would validate their model. And even if their model was perfect, 10% chance the real value would fall outside that range. So as long as the real number (which we will will have in 2 weeks once the rolling average and final tallies are in) then, well, they're still right.

Rolling averages introduce a lag.

Lockdowns were not meant to stop people from getting sick, they were meant to prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed.

NYC is about the only hospital system that came close to being overwhelmed and even they made almost no use of the temporary hospitals.

The record numbers of cases we see now coincides with record levels of testing- with such limited availability of testing prior to the lockdown, the majority of cases- those not needing hospitalization- were never counted.

maybe in the US, but lockdowns in many other countries have suppressed virus transmission completely. Why would our goal be different? Because we can't achieve that?

The US spans a continent and is the 3rd most populous nation.

Comparing it to someplace like Taiwan or Singapore doesn't make any sense.

China and India are larger. China suppressed the virus, India is doing worse than the US.

Comparing to those countries doesn't make much sense either because US is much wealthier. We should be doing far better than both, and we're not.

Meaningful comparisons require reasonably accurate data, and there is nothing like that to be found in any of these countries. Aside from the fact that testing has been minimal for a number of reasons, different areas have perverse incentives to either over or under count COVID fatalities.

In the US, any and every death of someone who had the virus, and many who did not, are still counted among the death tolls. The recent case of the guy who died from alcohol poisoning comes to mind, though I personally know of others who died from other causes, and were counted even though they hadnt been tested.

Conversely, there is good reason to be skeptical of China's accounting as well- both due to government interference and the simple fact that they were not able to reliably test the majority of cases.

You can look at the EU average, which is close to US population and still makes the US look bad. Test positive rates can tell you how roughly how much a country is undercounting.

If US has twice the test positive rate as another, they're only testing half the cases.

The fact is no matter what metric you look at, the US is doing worse with our response than almost anywhere else.

Larger but three times the population density, which likely means far more than 3 times the number of interactions.

And we don’t know how China is really ever doing about anything. We need to stop confusing statements from China with transparency.

Can you provide any specific reasons why a large group of people can't fight the virus in a similar way to multiple smaller groups of people?

Population density, primarily. More dense means more close contact, and more contact overall comparing areas with public transit to those without.

Not to mention the human toll of quarantine- I live surrounded by a few hundred acres of forest, my cousin in a studio apartment. My daily life has hardly changed since I also work from home. She lives in or near paris, I think, and couldn't go 10 feet past her apartment door without a permit, and mostly got that only for groceries. Even still, she managed to catch it (or a similar disease, since she was refused testing).

Some people on HN love to hate on rural life, but I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.

Which states are hitting records? AZ, one of the strongest reopenings as far as i know, has been on a downward trend on every relevant metric for about a month now.

I know a lot of the sources say different things, but the NYT site does not show AZ improving on daily case count - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/arizona-coronavi...

Here is the data directly from the arizona department of health: https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-cont...

I'm a broken record talking about how nytimes/etc. will always pick the more sensational data to sell ads, and how it doesn't matter for them if they're wrong (and how they actually have a financial incentive to be wrong). Maybe it is all just an accident though.

Doesn't this also show daily case counts trending upward for the past month?

Yes, but that’s because Arizona is doing more testing. If you click the “lab testing” section on that site you’ll see that the testing positive rate is also down substantially (from 11% to 5%) from our peak over a month ago.

It’s one of the things that public health officials have been warning about pretty consistently: as testing increases, positive cases will go up, but that shouldn’t be looked at as a bad thing.

Very good point.

dude, click on "Confirmed COVID-19 Cases by Day". If you ignore the drop every weekend and greyed bar from last few days (incomplete data) its increased every single week.

Number of new cases per day is steadily increasing every week! A month ago the daily new cases were half what they are this week

Because we are testing more. The testing positive rate is less than half of what it was a month ago.

I said this elsewhere but this is something health officials have specifically warned against. Yes case counts are going up, but that is because testing is increasing. The metric that matters is the testing positive rate.

More tests would reveal more carriers, yes. But at the same time, the curve would be more accurate, no? If the curve isn't going down DESPITE more tests being done, wouldn't that indicate that the problem is not getting better at all?

The curve is more accurate going forward for sure, but it's possible to record an increase in new cases each day simply by doing more tests, even as the number of new cases per capita declines. This effect theoretically wouldn't stop until you were testing basically everyone, at which point the new cases per capita and the new cases would be the same.

you are right, the testing page shows half the positive rate and far higher testing. I was wrong here, its likely that AZ cases are dropping

A lot of states are hitting daily records because they're ramping up testing. There isn't more sickness, there's more accurate numbers.

Basically by following absolute numbers, and commenting on them as if there's a failure on the state's part, you're punishing states for increasing testing.

This can be disproven by looking at daily death rates. Many states are also peaking in daily deaths vs average. There's undoubtedly more testing, but its not the main contributor to the lack of suppression

Deaths are a lagging indicator and shouldn't be used for this comparison. On average, in cases of death, it is about 18 - 23 days between diagnosis and death (compared to 12 - 17 days for recovery).

>Our lockdowns were so badly done they didn't even decrease the daily case count.

Is it any wonder? Look at the comments here. Look at guys like Elon Musk breaking quarantine for economic reasons and getting praised for it. Conspiracies abound.

This didn't happen in less partisan countries. Like absolutely everything else in the US, the lockdown became a political issue, for and against it.

Where I'm from, everyone took it seriously and in a matter of weeks we got down to ZERO active cases. Then again, we don't hate people who have different politics.

its not just political. The rich and powerful have too much influence. Countries with high income equality are the ones with successful lockdowns.

When your president is one of the richest men in the world its hard to convince leadership to shut down the economy.

And the US is pretty much unique with the whole "corporation is a person" nonsense