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Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

People are dying at an increasing rate?

What data are you referencing?

I'm a little blown away by statements like this. The United States is not New York City. New York City is a single location in a massive country.

Other than New York City there really has not been a problem with coronavirus in the United States compared to other nations in the world.

It is imperative that we all act responsibly to prevent other parts of the United States from getting to a bad place but we should maintain perspective that this is not the end of the world.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259629409016954883...

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1259601646591582212...

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You've got it backwards.

New York's curve has flattened, and is trending downwards.

When you remove New York from the US numbers, the trends look much worse.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/06/opinion/coron...

The detected cases are increasing due to an increase in testing.

Nate Silver has a great post the other day where he broke down the fact that the ratio of new cases per test administered has gone down.

I'm not saying we should all just act as normal, but I am saying that the media is creating a more pessimistic picture than is warranted by talking about positive cases without the context of an increase in tests administered.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-covid-19-tests-...

Seems to confirm, 28% increase in the past month overall in tests performed per positive. But this graph doesn't give any regional focus unfortunately - all we can say is that on a national scale, the positive test rate is decreasing. It is entirely possible that there is an increase being hidden by a larger decrease in the hot spots, but the next month should give us the answer.

> The detected cases are increasing due to an increase in testing.

People keep saying this, but at least for Illinois the numbers don't fit. The growth rate has been almost completely steady since the results of the shelter-in-place were seen.

> Nate Silver has a great post the other day where he broke down the fact that the ratio of new cases per test administered has gone down.

I think this is what's happening instead of finding new cases. We're just identifying more uninfected people.

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