This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2020-8-14, and is archived here as a curiosity. Minor changes to formatting, as well as basic copy-edits, may have been made in the transition from Facebook post to web format.
Today, the United States reported 55,649 new cases of the novel coronavirus, down from 61,520 a week ago (Covid Tracking Project). The put today in some perspective, the last eleven days have all had 50,000-some cases, except from one day with more and one day with less. Not a whole lot of movement the last eleven days.
Today, the US reported 1216 deaths, down from 1333 a week ago. Now, the day to day numbers jump all over the place based on what day of the week it is, but we can control for that by running the seven-day rolling average. And that average has been between 1000 and 1200 consistently for nineteen days now.
So now we will wait to see whether it goes up or down. I don't think these kinds of things can stay flat indefinitely, what with the number of infections constantly being multiplied by an R_t that is hard to balance at exactly 1.0. It seems to me it's much more likely to go up or down than stay put. But I could be wrong. The usual graphs are attached.
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