News and such.

First, remember weekend reporting is not as accurate as we might like, but new deaths today are under 900 again. New cases are down to under 20,000. The NYC area still has over half of each.

NY removed 245 deaths from their overall total on Saturday. There wasn't much explanation why. New cases and new deaths are running well under 'projections' no matter whose projections you're using.

New York still under reporting nursing home deaths due to their practice of not counting them if they're transported to a hospital and are declared dead after only 10 minutes. It looks like half of all NY deaths are nursing home deaths. Also, at least 25% of NY cases are "presumed" COVID deaths even if the presence of the virus is never confirmed. That is a terrible way to get good data needed for good policy. It seems very likely that NJ/MA/PA/CT are also reporting their deaths this way.

However, Most of the US is now reporting about twice as many tests conducted as 2 weeks ago, and new cases are still declining overall. The % positive tests has been less than 10% for nearly 2 weeks now. The decline has been steep in both GA and FL, which were castigated for opening their economies more that two weeks ago. The predicted spike in new cases and new deaths and "blood on the hands" of their governors stubbornly refuses to materialise. The science would indicate that it is past time to open up pretty much everything for those under age 55.

And even NYC shows people in the streets, in the parks, and on the beaches ignoring social distancing. Elected officials might as well admit defeat and just try to get people to be reasonable.

Right now more than half the new cases and new deaths are happening in 44 counties within 100 miles of NYC. It might seem to the uninitiated that the elected officials in that area are somehow still doing less than a stellar job.

Good news. In Detroit today no new deaths reported, None. Zilch, Zero. Nada. MI reports 11 new deaths. That will undoubtedly change by Tuesday when more accurate reports come in, but still good news.

Only big upward change in new cases were NJ, whose data just seems to jump all over the place, with 900, and MI, where new cases were up by 200 but new deaths were very low. The Sunday report had NY with an increase of 19 new deaths, but almost every other state was down, and the ones that were up were in single digits. 20 states reported 1 or 0 new deaths, 16 others had 10 (3 states) or fewer new deaths. Again, 472 of 865 new deaths (55%) were reported in NY/NJ/M/PA/CT.

The R0 of the US less NYC area seems to be 0.6, well below the R1 that indicates the epidemic is dying out. Even in the NYC area a lot of that area has R1 or less. If this were anything else the media would have left the story more than a week ago.

Ah. well. The Tuesday data will again tell the story. I'll report again then for sure. If the fat lady ain't singing she's sure clearing her throat and warming up like crazy.

Be safe for yourself and others.