re: Daily COVID Updated as of 11/2/20 8:00 PM

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OK, so people are concerned deaths are not tracking confirmed cases. There are two big reasons. First, deaths lags cases by 27 days now, and only lagged by 7-8 days in March. So, when people try to line them up, they line up the exponential rise in March. What has changed is people are testing closer to inoculation, and it takes less time from taking the test to reporting it. Second, test positivity is much lower, so we are missing fewer cases now than we did in early April. If you use the 27 day lag, and line up deaths with infection density, it is much harder to convince yourself there has been any change in the infectivity and danger of COVID-19. Instead, the additional time lag has given people a sense of false comfort that will come crashing down, in another 2-3 weeks, in Arizona. Here are plots of deaths overlaid with confirmed cases, nationally, and with infection density, to illustrate the sense of false comfort (top), and something closer to reality (bottom). We have the data to fine tune the infection density estimations again, and I think the sqrt rule will change to something like a 0.4 exponent rule, but I need time to analyze it properly.

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