Dispatch from Coronaville: Headed Downhill (In a Good Way)

At last the graphs are looking like I hoped they would.  A consistent downhill slide in new cases and new deaths. I'm feeling hopeful.

Still, people are suffering. Since this crisis arrived on American shores, I've gone from knowing no one who had COVID-19, to hearing about friends of friends getting it, to knowing acquaintances who have it, to now people that I know and love very well getting the infection. Until these graphs hit the x-axis, its not over yet.

The Numbers: The rate of increase in cases and deaths of COVID-19 continues to slow. As of today there have been 977,256 cases of the disease in the United States and 50,134 deaths. This about 13,000 fewer cases than I predicted, and 2000 fewer deaths. Taking the same rate of increase from the past three days and projecting to Thursday, May 30, a 10% increase in new cases would bring us to over one millions cases--a total of 1,074,982. Additionally a 10% increase in total deaths (an rate that has slowed by four percentage points since Friday) would bring us to 55,147.


The Graphs:

I have to say these graphs look great today! Both Florida and Ohio continue a precipitous drop in the number of new cases of COVID-19. In fact for the first time, Nebraska had more new cases than Ohio did (okay fine, it was only four more but still).  I'd like to think of it as Ohio joining the ranks the low viral-growth states rather than Nebraska moving up. We'll see what the next week or so brings.
Florida: 31,520 total cases, 0.14% of the population.
Ohio: 15,963 total cases, 0.14% of the population
Nebraska: 3,126 total cases, 0.16% of the population. For the first time Nebraska has the highest percentage of it's population infected of the three states in question.

More good news.  New deaths have also plummeted in all three states.  Florida has the lowest number of new deaths it's had in almost a month. Ohio has the lowest number since April 12.  And Nebraska could be returning to the virtually constant rate of 3-6 new deaths daily it had before the rate spiked last week.
Florida: 1,073 total deaths, a rate of 3.4%
Ohio: 728 total deaths, a rate of 4.6%
Nebraska: 56 total deaths, a rate of 1.8%
The one piece of consistently bad news is that the death rate for those who test positive is so high. I've heard the argument that if there are a large number of asymptomatic carriers, the death rate is actually much lower, but those percentages still represent a lot of people.