I wrote about the difference between an "apex" and a "plateau" last week, as the data from Italy were encouraging but also being misframed by the White House, and many wondered, "What's he on about?" Now on every channel I hear people distinguishing between an apex and a plateau.
In Italy, the anticipated "apex"—a discrete high point for infections and deaths, with a sharp slope on either side—turned out to be a *20-day plateau* with infection/death figures going slightly up or down day by day but staying above 4,000 daily infections and 700 daily deaths.
In the U.S., the White House has primed us for a single, clear, unambiguous apex, so when infection and death figures went down for one day this weekend, many assumed we were on the post-apex downward slope, and even some officials encouraged that foolhardy view of the situation.
Now we're right back up to our highest infection levels—33,000 to 34,500 daily—and the number of fatalities wasn't just higher today than ever before but is projected to continue rising for at least another 9 days. But why do we assume the downward slope thereafter will be steep?
We keep getting told that the IHME is using Italy in its modeling now, not just China. Okay, so why does that model not imagine the possibility of an "apex plateau," where our highest rate of infection and death—or in that ballpark—stays with us for 20 days, as happened in Italy?
So either the word "apex" needs to be taken out of our vocabulary for a minute, or else it must be coupled *consistently* with the word "plateau" *and* a clear statement that we don't know yet whether we're heading for is an apex or plateau. I think that it'd be a public service.
PS/ I also want to acknowledge the comment made on this thread about the use of log-scale—or other less egregiously misleading—graphs in media or elsewhere. I agree: such graphs tend to register *catastrophic* daily increases in infection and death as a "flattening of the curve."
PS2/ What's happening is a moving of the goalposts, so anything but exponential growth in infection and death is treated as a "flattening of the curve"—even as or when the infection/death figures are increasing at an intolerable rate or are settling into an intolerable "plateau."
