Dispatch from Coronaville: Riding the Corona-Coaster

I decided to graph a different look at the COVID-19 situation in my three benchmark states: Florida, Ohio, and Nebraska. For my graphs I wanted to look not at the total cases and deaths but just the new cases and new deaths.  What I found, I think, is insightful. I guess I was expecting a nice, smooth curve, perhaps still increasing or maybe on the downward slope. But instead we have something that looks a lot like a roller-coaster ride.  It's one scary ride and it doesn't look to me like we are near the end yet.  Here are the graphs, and below each one, my takeaways.

New cases are tricky. As I've said before an increase in cases due to more widespread testing would be a good thing, espec. As I've said before an increase in cases due to more widespread testing would be a good thing, especially if the number of deaths were consistently decreasing.  I'm not at all sure that's what we are seeing. Based on what my graph shows, in terms of new cases, Florida appears to have already peaked, whereas Ohio and Nebraska have not (or if they have that peak was today). Look at Ohio, despite all the good press about our governor, our new cases have skyrocketed shooting up from 1200 new cases on April 15 to 3600 today! That number matches Florida's previous peak and for the first time since I started keeping track on March 31, Ohio's new cases outpaced Florida's--and not be a little. Meanwhile Nebraska still seems to be on the uphill side of this as well.

Looking at new deaths, the news for Ohio is a little better. It's possible that we may have peaked on April 15 and are hopefully on the downhill side of this.  It appears that Florida peaked three days ago and is perhaps on the downhill side also.  Nebraska on the other hand saw it's greatest three day jump in deaths to date. The next six days should tell us a lot. Either we've still got some terrifying ups and downs a head or we are beginning the gradual approach to the end of this ride.  I know I would not feel comfortable opening up just yet.

For the nation as a whole. Total cases increased 12% to 804,175, about 7,000 shy of what I predicted. We notched down another 1% increase. Deaths increased 18%, down two percentage of increase points for a total of 40,185. I was off by just north of 600.  I will base my next predictions off these rates of increase. By Friday, April 24, there should be 900,676 cases in the United States, and 47,418 deaths.

The States: I'm making some minor modifications to my written data since the graphs tell us so much. I will posting my updated graphs with each post from here on out:
Florida: 27,861 total cases, 0.13% of the population. 866 total deaths, a rate of 3%.
Ohio: 13,725 total cases, 0.11% of the population.  557 total deaths, a rate of 4%. Part of the big jump in cases may have to do with the high rate of infection among our prison population.
Nebraska: 1,648 new cases, 0.1% of the population. 38 total deaths, a rate of 2.3%