Here are more thoughts regarding the possibility of a Covid floor in Colorado. First, as a reminder, both positivity and hospitalizations seem to have found a steady-state floor and have been at the same levels for weeks.

STEADY-STATE LEVELS ARE NOT NATURAL!

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Here's a chart showing last 10 years of visits for Influenza-like illnesses (ILI) in US. What's missing? Aside from perhaps mid-July to mid-Aug summer nadir, there are no steady-state periods where ILI visits remain unchanged for weeks. Such balance doesn’t occur naturally.

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And it makes sense, either the flu is spreading or contracting. To strike a perfect balance where there are a steady-state significant number of cases week over week would be very difficult. Even Colorado’s modeling group agrees.

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Go to CO model & try to produce an output w/multiple weeks of steady-state hospitalizations. You can do it, but if you move any parameter by even 1%, you'll change hospitalizations to either increasing or decreasing.

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https://cucovid19.shinyapps.io/colorado/ 

To achieve a steady state in an actual population with varying lockdown levels, behaviors, weather, protests, events, lockdown fatigue, etc. would be incredibly hard to accomplish (i.e., impossible).

Look at Sweden’s Intensive Care graph for a more natural curve.

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So theory is we aren't seeing true representation of Covid in a steady state condition in CO. We're seeing an artificial steady state, likely due to false positives, true positives not hospitalized "for" Covid, and/or some other artificial force.

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Colorado’s COVID-19 Modeling Group advising @GovofCO believes a return to January-like behavior would result in 55,000 more Covid deaths (~10,000 per million, 6x worse than NY-the worst place on Earth). The data & real-world examples of more open places (FL, Sweden) disagree.
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If floors remain stable, it’s a sure sign what we are seeing in hospitalizations and positivity in Colorado is not pure Covid cases, but some other phenomenon.

Conclusion: To @GovofCO - Covid isn't the threat you and your modeling group think it is. It's time to open up.

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