Here is the accumulated data of all known cases of coronavirus in the United States, courtesy of The COVID Tracking Project. As you can see the situation is getting both worse and better.
Worse in that deaths are starting to rise significantly, and that is far worse than it looks. At present about 40% of deaths are in New York state, with nearly all of those in the New York City area – the first American metropolitan region to suffer a full epidemic. Nor is NYC done. Today’s figures indicate the city has at least another week, likely two, before deaths peak. New York’s experience will soon be echoed in other areas with New Orleans, Seattle, Detroit and Chicago looking particularly worrisome. Not linear, logarithmic.
Better in that the United States is finally testing about 100,000 people a day. Without decent epidemiological data any public health policy with an eye on containment or mitigation is simply a shot in the dark. Unfortunately, materials, equipment and lab bottlenecks have made testing numbers plateau at this level. Multi-day delays in receiving test results are widespread. Until the United States can increase testing volumes to at least 1,000,000 a day and reduce testing times to a few hours, the only method the country will have for containing the epidemic is complete economic lockdown.
