I haven’t had time to do this for Minnesota lately, but I will. Here is the national data showing how the epidemic curve looks different when you see deaths by the date they actually occurred versus when they were reported by states. You can see that the epidemic clearly peaks earlier and higher by actual date of death. If this was what the public saw, the period of panic over large numbers of deaths would be shorter. Yet we keep getting lots of deaths added from weeks ago. Almost like someone is trying to maintain the panic. Thanks to Todd Lowdon on Twitter for the chart.
This is an exceptionally useful graph which proves a point I’ve often made in the past. Neither listing deaths by the day of death (solid blue) or by the day the death is reported (solid orange) gives an accurate view of the pandemic. The truth (dotted line) is in the middle. We should have been normalizing (predicting) the data in this manner all along.
Absent a true second wave, (which is not the same thing as the same wave going though yet another population center), we are in the tail end of the pandemic and hopefully close enough to population immunity that viral seasonality will be muted. The danger is mostly over. It remains to be seen how long the media can keep up the panic but they are very skilled at panic mongering. I’m sure they will mine everything and everywhere they can for bits and pieces of bad news they can use to stoke up fear and use ear plugs to prevent them from hearing the tsunami of good news which is about to hit us.