WUHAN VIRUS DAILY UPDATE FOR MARCH 30
It's nearly the end of the month but it ain't anywhere close to the end of the world. Today we broke through 1 million tests reported. Now we know that a lot of states aren't reporting negative tests so there's been a lot more than that done but, still, it's a nice number to hit. Yesterday we got back results on 113,503 tests of which 81% were negative. For all statistical intents and purposes, tests in America are only run on people showing symptoms so this means that 8 out of 10 people with symptoms do NOT have the Wuhan-virus. What we really really need is the capacity to test people randomly who do not have symptoms so we can understand the real presence of this virus in our communities and be able to take informed actions. Until this happens, a lot of it is guesswork and extremely costly. Hopefully next week a lot of new testing capacity comes online and this can start in earnest.
Our new total for incidents is 160,530 (+21,469), down to an increase of only 15.4% over the previous day (a new low record). Deaths have totaled 2,939 (+367) which is down to an increase of only 21.05% over the previous day. The numbers I'm seeing seem to indicate a delay of ~4 days from a positive test to mortality but that's really fuzzy. This means the delay between getting a test and getting the result is around 4-12 days most likely and, for cases that will result in mortalities, probably most of these are happening when the patient is checked into the hospital because their symptoms are already severe.
In summary, today was better than yesterday but not as good as tomorrow if projections continue as they have been.