Our benefactor notes:
Today is the lowest number of cases and deaths recorded since the end of March. It’s Sunday data, but still positive.
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Zachary Smith
A link I saw this morning:
If only we Had that $6.4 Trillion we wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to Lift the Economy and Fight Coronavirus
Random thought triggered by that link:
If only the “opposition” political party wasn’t always playing footsie with the Republicans
Olivier
Ian, you may have commented on it earlier but what’s with these fairly regular oscillations?
gnokgnoh
Olivier, the oscillations are weekly. For new cases, the lowest numbers are typically on Tuesday, which are actually Monday numbers, which I also think are simply low reporting from each state carried over the from the weekend.
Each state reports numbers differently, and some states are actively suppressing them. One state that we know of, NY, is actively trying to reconcile untested deaths with the increase in the average number of deaths for the time of year. That is why there are some crazy spikes about a month ago.
Johns Hopkins data are usually much more current than CDC data. Also, I picture graduate students getting health or social science degrees aggregating this data every day from state health agencies or other sources. Evidently, some are county-based health departments. Hopefully, they’ve set up reporting mechanisms, so that the data collection is mostly not manual.
Frankly, we don’t know.
gnokgnoh
One more comment about the oscillations. A number of states aggregate and report their numbers at the end of the week. Consistently, they have 0 new cases and deaths early in the week and then report them later in the week. This helps drive up the numbers, which is one reason for the oscillation. Another one is likely that there are fewer staff working on the weekends.
Olivier
@gnokgnoh I see. Thank you.