US numbers via @COVID19Tracking. Weird but better day.

Newly-reported deaths
Today: 2,108
Yesterday: 2,674
One week ago (4/15): 2,492

Newly-reported cases
T: 27K
Y: 27K
4/15: 30K

Newly-reported tests
T: 311K
Y: 152K
4/15: 161K

Share of positive tests
T: 9%
Y: 18%
4/15: 19%

First, on the deaths: good that the numbers are down not only from the awful ones yesterday, but also relative to a week ago. Leaves hope that some of the #'s yesterday were states catching up on deaths that had been missed before. Still: over 2K per day so not much to celebrate.

On the cases and tests: California reported a huge backlog of negative tests today, which is why there was the sharp one-day increase. It probably does not represent a new normal of higher testing volumes, unfortunately.

MANY states, California being the perhaps the worst offender, report positive tests diligently but negative tests erratically. So when you see a state report 150K "new" negative tests, it doesn't mean the tests were all conducted yesterday.

Instead, for states like these, it means "we've had 150K more negative tests results since we last could be bothered to give you a good estimate of negatives". Odds are that many those negatives actually occurred days ago or even weeks ago.

Importantly, the negatives do not necessarily line up with the positives. If I take a test Tuesday, and it's positive, it might show up in the data Wednesday in California. If it's negative then, who knows—it might show up next week.

In states that *are* diligent about reporting negatives, like New York, you *can* literally say "here's what share of tests were positive yesterday". That doesn't work in states like California where negatives and positives are reported with different lags.