US Coronavirus Update for Saturday, April 25, 2020
~ A frustrating day

Summary first ~

• Deaths rise back above 2,000

• Cases rise largest amount during pandemic

• Both increase enough that percent increase also rises

• Testing capacity continues increasing—a bright spot

2/ Now, fatalities.

• Total US covid-19 deaths as of Sat, Apr 25: 53,312

• Increase in last 24 hours: 2,120 (+ 4%)

--> Trailing 5-day average of deaths, 4/25: 2,213

--> Trailing 5-day average of deaths, 4/18: 2,638

--> Trailing 5-day average of deaths, 4/11: 1,920

3/ US deaths are no longer rising dramatically.

But US deaths are not falling, either.

See graph below, from data wizards @washingtonpost.

The bold bar is daily deaths, Apr 7.

It's been 18 days since then. The rate of new deaths has plateaued—at 80 an hour, every hour since.

4/ It is worth recalling that on April 1, US deaths were rising at 26% a day or more.

That day, with that rate, we were on track to be at 200,000 US deaths today — or more.

We prevented that from happening.

5/ But we need to be careful of 'getting used to' 2,000 covid19 deaths a day.*

The deadliest year of the Vietnam War was 1968.

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*Some people think the opposite: Let's get used to it & go back to living. See this thread: https://twitter.com/cfishman/status/1248318309659029506?s=20