> What's interesting is that many US states have shown virtually linear growth for more than a month,
The US data is tricky to interpret because the nation's testing rate has been growing relatively slowly. Over the past week (Covid tracking project data), the US has reported about 242k tests/day; for the week ending April 7 (so 4 weeks ago), that number was 144k tests/day.
In the meantime, an extended peak is consistent with the idea that policy measures in place have reduced the R0, but only to a value close to 1. Suppose stay-at-home orders reduce the number of daily contacts by about 70%, taking the R0 from 2.5 to about 0.8. With an infection period of two weeks, that would only reduce the number of new infections per day by 35% after a month.
The US data is tricky to interpret because the nation's testing rate has been growing relatively slowly. Over the past week (Covid tracking project data), the US has reported about 242k tests/day; for the week ending April 7 (so 4 weeks ago), that number was 144k tests/day.
In the meantime, an extended peak is consistent with the idea that policy measures in place have reduced the R0, but only to a value close to 1. Suppose stay-at-home orders reduce the number of daily contacts by about 70%, taking the R0 from 2.5 to about 0.8. With an infection period of two weeks, that would only reduce the number of new infections per day by 35% after a month.
reply