Today the trends are undeniable; infections are falling in three of the most severely affected states. It may be that people are social distancing, wearing masks, staying home due to fear, or simply that closing bars has had a significant impact. If this holds to the earlier scenario in NYC, Detroit, and other cities, these hotspots seem to burn themselves out. Since strict stay at home orders are not in place in these states, it will be important to follow these trends and see what happens. Will numbers continue to fall once they start dropping? What measures are needed to keep the numbers falling? Time will tell, but will also guide how we handle future outbreaks.
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Pandemic Pondering 
Well, I hope the number of tests being given is roughly the same everyday, otherwise the data means nothing. The majority of folks who are prudent will for the most part withdraw back into their family units if when news spreads that the number of cases are exploding in their vicinity. Seems like it will be an endless cycle until a vaccine is developed and utilized on a vast scale.
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Detected cases are falling in certain areas because they are doing less testing – Arizona is one such example. This past week ending July 18th they did 56k tests compared to 109k tests 3 weeks ago, a decline of almost 50%. Can track on the site below – double click on the legend at bottom on “Daily Total Tests” to isolate the data. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states/arizona
The decision to reduce testing defies logic, especially as test positivity rates hover at ~25% in the state. I am not sure if there are problems w testing capacity, or political motivations in an election year to attempt to downplay the pandemic spread. As a fiscal conservative, I’ve never been much of a believer in the government doing anything well, but the response to Covid over the past few months leaves much to be desired, especially in light of the trillions of dollars the government is freely spending these days.
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There are acute shortages of some testing kits which may play into the reductions. Agree makes no sense. Because the R0 and the percentage of tests that are positive are both falling makes it likely the drop is real.
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Here’s a better data source/ visual for Arizona:
https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php
If you click on “Laboratory Testing” and scroll down, the bar chart is mind boggling. Specimen collections peaked around end of June and have been declining rapidly since. I tried to search news in the region, but couldn’t find a logical explanation for this.
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