Look at testing today vs. yesterday in California and Texas and watch the magic begin. We’ve hit the bulls*** phase of the pandemic. U.S. testing ‘looks’ relatively consistent day to day, but when you dive in you realize most numbers are way down and then a few states every day pound in huge numbers to make it look like daily testing is staying relatively the same despite numerous large places having big drops in testing from day to day. I’m pretty sure each time a place does this it probably ‘fixes’ their 7DMA to look relatively consistent. The reality is it seems to just hold down positives and/or spreads them out. Arizona seems like it’s trying to see how close it can get to zero tests before anyone notices.
To go further, California had 172,234 tests today and 118,952 yesterday. Connecticut added 38,324 after having 0 on Sat and Sun. Texas had 47,797 tests today and 13,207 yesterday. On a day there were 720,603 tests (not far off average), those three places made up 35.8% of the daily test total. Yesterday, those places were 18.5% of the daily test total. That difference makes it look like there were closer to 595,000 tests than the usual 700k+. Yesterday’s pumps were Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, Oregon, and Virginia. Without their aberrations in testing, we probably would have been around 600k tests again (I just did a quick eyeball, so it could be worse than that). Right now, testing looks completely like smoke and mirrors to me, which means when the big event comes from back to school it’s going to look way worse than it actually is, because right now is way worse than it appears.
-I consider there to be 31 places are that significantly to massively down in testing recently.
-I consider there to be 11 states that are relatively static from day to day week to week or at least within reason meaning there aren’t massive testing anomalies.
-For today only, there are 9 places that had significant increases in testing based on their regular numbers.
As I said above, this is a moving target. The big states appear to be shifting when they report large test numbers making each day’s U.S. testing average look higher than it seems to be in actuality. I’m not saying that’s intentional, I’m just saying it’s created a massive distortion of reality for people who only look at the surface of the pandemic numbers.
Goofy, is it hard for you to create those testing vs. positive graphs for all 50 states and D.C.? If it’s not time consuming, that would probably be really useful to see.
