NJ 2020 04 13

As usual we see an increase but following this seems to be all good news.

The % daily increase is lowest yet

The death rates are dropping. Below 100 for the state.

The doubling time for the state has been increasing steadily. It is now above 9.

The doubling time by county is excellent for mot counties.

The doubling time for Morris is now 17 which is excellent.

The above is the most critical. It shows for the first time a decrease in symptomatic! Also the New is dropping! If this holds we are beyond the peak and in two weeks the system should be flushed.

The above is the % infected. It is about 0.7%

The above is the prevalence for the state. This is the percent of the population which is an active carrier based upon current testing methodologies. It also has flattened.

This is the prevalence for Morris, it flattened earlier and we expect a down turn.

These curves based upon data, noisy as it may be, should be the factors on opening up counties. Unfortunately the State management seems grossly incapable of the thought process and communicating it.

Bottom line today, we are at and over the hump and on our way to resolution. The question is how to we manage the return. My answer is testing and feedback management. Let us see if politicians can come up with something. No luck thus far.

On the other hand all of the above good news may be an artifact due to the incompetent testing logistics managed in the State. If one can believe the NY Times, they report,

So far, New Jersey has conducted over 115,000 tests, about one for every 75 residents. Across the river in New York, the epicenter of the crisis, there is about one for every 18. The tests are a critical tool in measuring the disease’s spread and a requirement for certain forms of treatment. Yet they remain hard to get, and many are actively discouraged from trying. “It’s unequivocally worsening,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said recently, adding, “We’ve got constraints in the entire food chain.” Initially, the strain came from a lack of test kits, but now there are not enough nasal swabs, not enough nurses. There is a pileup at the labs themselves and a limited supply of the chemicals needed to identify the virus.

Thus one may have no trust in this data. The data will be critical for any recovery and having critically ill people line up in the early morning for a test of dubious efficacy makes getting dental work in Moscow look great!

If indeed the data we are getting and using is 11 days old how are we to judge what to do. Data should reflect what was captured and when. If the NY Times is correct then we are dealing with gross incompetents who present data which is grossly in error. This is what will happen every time we rely upon Government workers and regulations. What if there were a free market for tests. One can believe that based upon what we are told, if we believe it, that the data collected in New Jersey is utterly useless. Pity!