April 15 - COVID-19 in Westchester County, NY

Here are the updated charts with data through April 14, 2020. Click on a chart to enlarge it.

A decrease in the number of daily deaths is the last indicator of a lowered infection rate. Unfortunately it comes about four weeks after the infection rates were lowered (New Rochelle 'containment zone' was announced on March 10, Westchester was essentially quiet by the 14th, NYS stay-at-home was announced on the 20th) , that is if you believe that the 'social distancing' measures were the cause of reduced infections.  Unfortunately the feedback loop is long. It would be great if your phone beeped at the moment the virus invaded your body.."You've Been Infected."  Even worse, for some people there never comes a "beep."  They never have symptoms. They have no fever, they have no runny nose.  They slip past crude detection measures into our nursing homes and groceries. They innocently and unwittingly carry the virus to others. As we look for ways to 'reopen' we must assume everyone is a carrier. Perhaps recovered patients, those testing positive with antibodies, and those recently testing negative for the virus could identify themselves in some way, but otherwise we must protect ourselve from others AND we must protect others from US.

The deaths in Westchester have gone down three days in a row (orange line) even though the deaths in NYS jumped up slightly..

Deaths in NYC continued to drop.  The increases in deaths are coming from Long Island and upstate.

Here is the model of IHME which predicts the deaths in NYS to drop below 100 on April 25.

The new cases in Westchester dropped again (red line) and appear to be following the downward slope of the gaussian curve (blue line).  The orange line assumes an epidemic duration similar to Bergamo, Italy.

Statistically, Westchester (and metro NYC) is still riding on a plateau where the flow of new cases has not ebbed much.  If the virus has an incubation time of only a few days (which I am beginning to doubt) then the virus is still smoldering in the population and its contagion is such that despite the social distancing it is continuing to spread.

The new antibody testing will not be of much help to many regions of the country, but here in Westchester it could be of real value in showing if we are getting close to herd immunity. Could it be that more than 80% school-age children here are already exposed and immune? Or is the fraction of the population who have been exposed closer to the the number who have tested positive (2%)?  Let's get some testing done!