Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Could be real, but a lots of the states/municipalities tend to use Tuesdays to "catch up" on reporting for events that transpired over the weekend.  If we wanted to smooth the data for better trend analysis, we might should be using something like a 3-day rolling average.  But honestly I think it's pretty pointless to try to get a daily snapshot anyway, the data is much more stable about a week later. 

Anyway, overall there is some good news here.  Hopefully we see the peak sooner than expected, and the area under the curve remains lower than expected.

To add to your point, I believe that some hospitals/states are inflating the number of deaths of COVID. That is to say that they are counting people that die of other ailments and have tested positive for COVID as dying from COVID instead of dying WITH COVID. I read an article about this in Italy. The Minister of the Dept of Health in Italy stated that 88% of the people that were reported to having died from COVID, in fact died of other ailments and simply tested positive for COVID. In other words, there is a difference from dying OF COVID from dying WITH COVID.

The analogy is that someone with COVID and shows no symptoms, commits suicide. There are accusations that these people are counted in the deaths from COVID when obviously their death was self induced. Based on the way that hospitals and states like to use statistics to fund things, it is not inconceivable that there are those that would engage in this activity to drive up the numbers.

Another thing that would affect the R naught value would be the number of people that most likely either have or have had the virus but were never tested. I have heard and read quite a bit that speculates this number of people could be much higher than some are predicting. Until we can test everyone, I don't believe we will ever know the real R naught value.

Publix here gives you a $10 gift card if you get a free flu shot from them.  I'm down with that.

   Right now the only way I'm down with that is if a team of NFL lineman catch me and sit  

Note that R0 value is not an independent variable. R0 can be reduced if you do things like... Cancel/ban large public gatherings, mandate stay-at-home orders for nonessential business, encourage [and people comply] with social distancing in general. 

What I fear is that all the people who thought we were overreacting to COVID-19, if the final death toll comes in under 100K, will use that as evidence that we overreacted, rather than recognizing that our reaction is the REASON it stayed below 100K. 

What I fear is that all the people who thought we were overreacting to COVID-19, if the final death toll comes in under 100K, will use that as evidence that we overreacted, rather than recognizing that our reaction is the REASON it stayed below 100K.

You can't fix stupid.

What I fear is that all the people who thought we were overreacting to COVID-19, if the final death toll comes in under 100K, will use that as evidence that we overreacted, rather than recognizing that our reaction is the REASON it stayed below 100K.

I think that's the reasoning of a lot of folks - stay the course and repeat that when we are out of the woods,when that happens