This is from the COVID Tracking Project:
The most current numbers per DHHS are:
Before you “OH MY GOD, THE NUMBER OF CASES IS INCREASING BY A FACTOR OF 100 ON A MONTHLY BASIS” … it does not work that way. You have to account for the number of people tested.
Working backwards using the COVID 19 Tracking Project data:
3/28: 290 more tests … 29 more cases.
3/27: 415 more tests … 21 more cases.
3/26: 674 more tests … 29 more cases.
3/25: 916 more tests … 7 more cases.
If we assume that the latest numbers from DHHS are 895 new tests (214 positive plus 4,524 negative) … the corresponding number of new cases is 27 new cases.
Let’s ignore 3/25 as a possible anomaly because the number of new cases is so low.
The last four test results do NOT show exponential growth. On 3/26: 4.3% of newly tested were positive. On 3/27: 5.1%. On 3/28: 10%. On latest DHHS numbers: 3%.
The increase from 3/27 to 3/28 per the COVID 19 Tracking Project appears to be a timing issue as the number of new tests is low relative to the prior data … while the DHHS numbers for the next day are relatively high. If we combine the latest DHHS numbers with the COVID 19 tracking project numbers for 3/28 we get 1,185 new tests and 56 positives or 4.7%, which is right in line with the rates on 3/26 and 3/27.
This is NOT an exponential growth rate. We are NOT seeing day by-day a higher-and-higher percentage of those tested returning positive results. We are seeing essentially the same percentage testing positive. The growth is essentially linear.
We see the same thing for the hospitalization rate. For the same three day period: six, six and eight new hospitalizations. And we don’t even know how long those hospitalizations were and how many are still hospitalized.
All of this data is prior to Sununu ordering his lockdown, shutdown, or whatever you want to call it. But not only does the data not support the increased measures, the data suggests that we should instead be looking at rolling back the prior measures.
