Has the Spike Peaked? 

You might not know this if you rely on the media for your news and views, but the spike in cases and deaths from COVID-19 seems to have peaked and is heading down.

The daily case count peaked on July 17 with 77,638 cases and was down to 46,321 as of August 3. The 5-day average death count, which always follows the case count by a week or two, peaked on July 25 at 1096. On August 3, it was down to 984.

And this pattern is true for the states that experienced the biggest surges: California, Florida, and Texas.

If the decline continues for another week or so, we will have in Florida, Texas, and California pretty much the same pattern that we saw in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, whose cases peaked around April 7 and whose deaths peaked about two weeks later.

What’s really interesting to me is the fact that those states that peaked in April have had no surge in cases since then. You could attribute that to more masks and social distancing – a claim I’ve yet to see any evidence for – or it is possible, as I speculated in March, that the reported case count is still a fraction of the real count, and we may be closer to herd immunity than we think.