COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)

efil4stnias said

you cant look at the WHOLE of the US in terms of numbers. If they arent testing as many in NYC then those numbers will be lower, affecting the overall numbers of the US. Same for other parts of the US.

The spikes remain - thats indisputable as evidenced by Texas, Arizona and FL numbers. And if infected folks travel to other cities and spread, with the 2 week window for symptoms, any number of cities could see a spike in weeks to come.

Thats the real issue with COVID - the incubation period.

Click to expand...

Agree - using nationwide numbers isn't really that useful - if there are spiking new case counts in multiple areas across the US (and there are) it's concerning even if the total case counts are fairly flat. Particularly as people are moving around more, spiking case counts means the virus is spreading rapidly on those locations, and not only does that mean trouble for those locations, it likely means that increased counts will come in from other areas as well (lagging).

Another thing to note about total case counts nationwide is that the NYC area outbreak was massive in scale due to the total population and population density there. You may have 10 other smaller areas with spikes on a per capita basis that are quite high . . . but the raw count won't appear that worrisome if you simply reference overall numbers in late March or April that were driven by the New York area outbreak.