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comment by wasoxygen
wasoxygen  ·  1624 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’

Can you hazard a more specific prediction?

The article — no paywall from the horse's mouth — makes no predictions, but suggests that things are under control.

When I imagine what a second wave would look like, it would be the original growth in case numbers, then a decline, followed by renewed growth. When I Google "us cases" the first hit looks like a steady rate or slight decline. I question the reliability of the numbers, but that's the evidence we have and I don't see a second wave today.

What about the claims about media, that "talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage"? I search Google News for "us cases" while not logged in to Google.

  Latest stories

KOB

Navajo Nation resumes weekend lockdowns as Arizona virus cases rise

FOX 10 News Phoenix

Navajo Nation resumes weekend lockdowns as Arizona coronavirus cases rise

CBS News

China races to contain a second wave of coronavirus cases in Beijing

NPR

Texas Governor Says 'No Reason Today To Be Alarmed' As Coronavirus Cases Set Record

LancasterOnline

Here are the 10 Pennsylvania counties with the highest rates of new coronavirus cases over the past 2 weeks

morethanthecurve.com

Just 18 new cases of Coronavirus reported on June 16th

CBS News

6 states report record-high jumps in coronavirus cases as reopening plans weighed

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Texas sees record number of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations

Washington Post

Live updates: Nine states hit record highs for covid-19 cases as Pence calls fear of a second wave ‘overblown’

CNBC

Record spike in new coronavirus cases reported in six U.S. states as reopening accelerates

WAVY.com

Virginia June 16 COVID-19 update: 445 new cases, 18 new deaths reported; Testing numbers continue to stagnate

About ten of those look like alarming stories of high rates. It is no more surprising that hyperlinked headlines will describe "record-high jumps" than it is that the VP would brag about keeping things under control.





mk  ·  1616 days ago  ·  link  ·  

COVID19 is spreading, but distancing rules were/are being relaxed. There will be (is?) a second wave, and it will be worse than the first. Political points of view don't factor into that.

    I question the reliability of the numbers, but that's the evidence we have and I don't see a second wave today.

I didn't see it 8 days ago either, but based on the numbers and behavior, it was easy to predict.

wasoxygen  ·  1612 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    easy to predict

Nothing about this seems easy to predict to me; I am constantly perplexed.

The CDC cases per day metric looks much worse than it did 12 days ago, just what I would think of a a second wave.

But of course "cases" means diagnosed and reported cases, and that number depends on factors unrelated to health.

Mortality seems like a more reliable indicator, "lagging" though it may be. By this measure the CDC reports improvement every week since mid-April, both for deaths involving COVID-19 and deaths from all causes. I note that these reports have a delay of "1 week to 8 weeks or more" so we should come back to check the 5,577 (COVID-19) and 53,678 (all cause) numbers that now appear for the week ending 5/30/2020.

mk  ·  1612 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The median time to death from contracting is about 24 days (5.5 + 18.5). I believe the average is higher than 24, not lower. In two weeks the numbers of deaths will rise like the numbers of cases are now. Check me on that.

I think that deaths from all causes is probably the most conservative measure.