I’m relying on the NY Times extract of the John’s Hopkins coronavirus counts, for this. Plus the 6 PM count as posted on the Hopkins map.
I added a seven day moving average to try to smooth out the day-to-day variations. On any given day, that’s just the sum of counts for the last seven days, divided by seven. Sometimes that lets your eye perceive any change in the trend that might otherwise get lost amid the daily ups-and-downs. (But that smoothness comes at a cost of being “late”, in the sense that if there is some change, the seven-day moving average takes seven days to reflect that fully.)
For Virginia as a whole, by eye, we’re still in the “exponential growth” phase. That gray line is “concave upwards”, like the side of a bowl. And it could just be wishful thinking on my part, but the Fairfax seven-day moving average appears qualitatively different. That looks concave-downward to me — like the peak of a hill. Starting to break away from exponential growth, by eye, sometime around 3/28-ish or so.
Obviously, that could be wishful thinking. You eye can play tricks on you. And we’d need another week to at least to confirm it. But for now, at least, Fairfax County does not appear to be experiencing exponential growth. We’re getting more new cases each day, sure. And total cases continue to rise. But not, for the moment, at an accelerating rate.
Well, we’ll see.
Please wear a face covering of some sort when your are in public, near others.
