Nominally, the U.S. is back down to 32 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day. Practically, though, that dip is going to be an artifact of the July 4th holiday. As a result, it’s hard to say exactly where we stand today.
Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts: Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 7/5/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.” The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
The only thing worth noting about the graph above is that the dip in reported cases for July 4th is much smaller than for the two prior holidays (Memorial Day, Juneteenth).
I don’t think that July 4 is any less of a holiday. If this were a chart of stock prices, I would solemnly declare that we are seeing higher lows. That is, the dips in the curve haven’t dipped down as far as they did in the recent past. That suggests that the underlying longer-term trend in cases is up. And if this were a chart of stock prices, we’d see confirmation of an upward trend tomorrow if we see higher highs. That is, if tomorrow’s rebound ends up higher than the rebounds from the two prior holidays.
So, for once, you don’t have to wait long to see the results of the prediction. Today’s dip was higher than dips from the just-prior two holidays. If tomorrow’s rebound is higher than the corresponding rebounds, that suggests that we’ve started on an upward trend.
FWIW.
As of this writing (10 AM 7/5/2022), CDC still hasn’t updated the figures on their COVID data tracker. I’d like to see whether hospitalizations continue to rise. As of June 30, we were just under 5000 new COVID-19 hospitalizations per day. I’ll check back later in the day, and if the CDC gets around to refreshing that number, I’ll reported it below.
