[M T]

The LA Times graphic that has doubling time is, IMO, poorly done.  There are lines coming from the origin that indicate doubling per month, week, etc.  The first thing I thought was that where the endpoint was for a county meant that the doubling time was between the two doubling lines surrounding it, but that is not the case. 

Doubling rate may be a way to view things in the first few weeks of an outbreak, but is mostly meaningless now.   Consider if you had 1M cases in Big county in the February, but now had 1,000 cases a day.   All those early cases are no longer infectious so they shouldn't clog the statistics of growth rate.  Consider if it had 500 cases 2 weeks ago, 1000 cases 1 week ago, 2000 cases this week.   Consider Little county having 200 cases a day every day for a month.  Growth rate is constant, but high value.

[M T]

The LA Times graphic that has doubling time is, IMO, poorly done.  There are lines coming from the origin that indicate doubling per month, week, etc.  The first thing I thought was that where the endpoint was for a county meant that the doubling time was between the two doubling lines surrounding it, but that is not the case. 

Doubling rate may be a way to view things in the first few weeks of an outbreak, but is mostly meaningless now.   Consider if you had 1M cases in Big county in the February, but now had 1,000 cases a day.   All those early cases are no longer infectious so they shouldn't clog the statistics of growth rate.  Consider if it had 500 cases 2 weeks ago, 1000 cases 1 week ago, 2000 cases this week.   Consider Little county having 200 cases a day every day for a month.  Growth rate is constant, but high value.