This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2020-9-4, 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 51,513 new cases of the novel coronavirus, up from 46,456 a week ago (Covid Tracking Project). Although the seven-day rolling average is has gone approximately nowhere over the past week (from 41,534 to 40,706), the individual days over the past week have been all over the place -- from about 31k to about 52k.
We reported 998 deaths today, down from 1023 a week ago. The deaths seem to be continuing their steady climb down over the last few weeks.
Since the case data has been weird lately, and there's also been a major recent change in testing practices under the CDC's guidelines, it's worth looking at hospitalizations. Today the number of reported Covid hospitalizations nationwide is 34,099, down from 37,239 a week ago. There's also the testing positivity rate: that's dropped from about 5.9% to 5.5%.
So while the case count seems to be throwing weird signals over the last week, the hospitalizations, deaths, and test positivity rate are both down somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-9% for the week.
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