[OutsiderFan]

I find it ironic that California is proving him [POTUS] right.

Um, surely you had your tongue firmly planted in cheek, right?

I mean there isn't really any need to point out the number of infections that exist have no relationship to those identified by testing, especially given how horrible our testing is, right? Not only are we not doing enough testing to catch as many infections as there are, we're not letting people know if they are positive fast enough to make sure the infected people isolate and can be contact traced, which furthers spread. 

I looked at the Santa Clara County testing dashboard this morning and was equally alarmed as you, MT, by the dark shading over recent test results, and the accompanying "we're still waiting for results" message.

It's also hard for me to understand the drop-off in national cases reported. Last week we hit 78k on 7/24. This week we haven't gone past 69k on any day. I find it really hard to believe things started dropping off so fast.  It seems last week there might have been a bit more recognition of how serious the pandemic is in places that weren't taking it seriously before (as evidenced by the 80% of Americans now favor mandatory masks), but it would take two weeks for any case reductions to show in the data, yet here we are with fewer cases being reported this week.  We should have gone over 80k reported infections this week, based on the data and now pretty reliable prediction models, and did not. 

The thing to watch for is deaths reported.  If we see deaths continue climbing, and we see a death rate higher than the number of cases reported over the last two weeks, in a few weeks, we'll know for certain that the reason case numbers dropped this week was because testing capacity was overwhelmed, not because there were fewer cases.

[OutsiderFan]

I find it ironic that California is proving him [POTUS] right.

Um, surely you had your tongue firmly planted in cheek, right?

I mean there isn't really any need to point out the number of infections that exist have no relationship to those identified by testing, especially given how horrible our testing is, right? Not only are we not doing enough testing to catch as many infections as there are, we're not letting people know if they are positive fast enough to make sure the infected people isolate and can be contact traced, which furthers spread. 

I looked at the Santa Clara County testing dashboard this morning and was equally alarmed as you, MT, by the dark shading over recent test results, and the accompanying "we're still waiting for results" message.

It's also hard for me to understand the drop-off in national cases reported. Last week we hit 78k on 7/24. This week we haven't gone past 69k on any day. I find it really hard to believe things started dropping off so fast.  It seems last week there might have been a bit more recognition of how serious the pandemic is in places that weren't taking it seriously before (as evidenced by the 80% of Americans now favor mandatory masks), but it would take two weeks for any case reductions to show in the data, yet here we are with fewer cases being reported this week.  We should have gone over 80k reported infections this week, based on the data and now pretty reliable prediction models, and did not. 

The thing to watch for is deaths reported.  If we see deaths continue climbing, and we see a death rate higher than the number of cases reported over the last two weeks, in a few weeks, we'll know for certain that the reason case numbers dropped this week was because testing capacity was overwhelmed, not because there were fewer cases.