This was originally a Facebook post of mine from 2020-9-9, 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 30,983 cases of the novel coronavirus, down from 31,305 a week ago (Covid Tracking Project). While that day-to-day looks flat, this past seven days the us averaged 36,603 cases per day, compared to 39,992 for the seven days before that. So that's something like an 7-8% drop over the last week.
We reported 1089 deaths today, up from 1048 a week ago today, but this comes after two very slow reporting days, so some catch-up is expected. If you do the same week-to-week thing we just did with cases, this week's number is 730 deaths per day, compared to 867 the week before. So that's something like a 19% drop over the last week.
We're now at 16 days since the CDC changed its guidelines on who should get tests. This appears to have had approximately zero effect on how tests are actually being conducted. If the CDC guidelines had been followed, we might have expected a rise in the testing positivity rate. Instead, I've attached a graph of the positivity rate with an arrow showing when the guidance changed.
On top of that, the usual graphs are attached.
This page is released under the CC0 1.0 license, except for the graph on testing. The blue graphs I made myself; the graph on tests is from John's Hopkins, except for the little CDC-related annotation on it.