The New Case Count in Westchester does not have the predicted Bell Curve shape. Instead it has a very long tail. The decay in New Cases over the last four weeks can be approximated by a straight line (orange line). Will this be the trajectory for the next few weeks? The New Case Count in Bergamo Italy has leveled at about 50 cases per day for the last 2 weeks. [Bergamo Province is about the same size as Westchester]. This would be the equivalent of Westchester leveling off at about 150 cases per day by next week.
The testing level in Westchester has been rather constant as seen in the blue line below. The number of positive cases (red line) is definitely correlated to the number of tests. The more you test, the more positives you detect. The testing is not a random sample of the population....supposedly it is people with severe symptoms, healthcare professionals, and of course the rich and famous (a few too many of which we have here in Westchester.) But maybe it is not far from a random sample? And why has no random sample study been done? If the Percent Testing Positive is constant regardless of the sample size, that would indicate that maybe the sample does represent Westchester at-large? That would mean about 1 in 4 persons in Westchester currently carry the virus?
The trends of 'Percent Testing Positive' for Westchester, NYC, and Nassau County (borders NYC on the east) are very much aligned. This data has not been filtered or smoothed, but is less 'noisy' than all of the other data. If a growing percentage of the population is resolving from the virus (and exhibiting antibodies to it), that would make the Percent-Testing-Positive drop because they are supposedly immune from the virus. Last's week's report that 20% of the NYC Metro area have antibodies almost perfectly agrees with the ~20% decline in the Percent Testing Positive. Is that just a coindidence? If we project the trend below into the future, Westchester will be at about 15% in a week which is not too far from the national average.
Deaths in Westchester continue to be flat at around 30 per day. See orange line in the middle chart above. This has been the case for about 3 weeks. Interestingly, the normal number of deaths per day in Westchester is about 30? Are almost all deaths in Westchester being categorized as COVID related?
Model your own epidemic
If you have cabin fever, you can create your own model for the epidemic here. You will probably do just as well as the experts.
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