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US numbers via @COVID19Tracking.

LOTS of tests today.

Newly-reported deaths
Today: 2,194
Yesterday: 1,772
One week ago (4/18): 1,774

Newly-reported cases
T: 41K
Y: 31K
4/18: 28K

Newly-reported tests
T: 301K
Y: 224K
4/18: 141K

Share of tests positive
T: 14%
Y: 14%
4/18: 20%
The rise in the number of cases shouldn't be alarming. We're suddenly doing about twice as many tests as we were a week ago, which is good, so we're finding more cases.

Still, back over 2,000 deaths, and on a weekend no less (usually slower for reporting). That's not good.
Something I'm not sure about: does improving test capacity also lead to correctly identifying more deaths as having been from COVID-19? It seems possible that's true in some edge cases, but I have no idea how widespread.
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
US daily numbers via @COVID19Tracking:

Newly-reported deaths
Today: 1,793
Yesterday: 2,041
One week ago (4/24): 1,866

Newly-reported cases
T: 35K
Y: 28K
4/24: 35K

Newly-reported tests
T: 321K*
Y: 205K
4/24: 232K

Positive test rate
T: 11%
Y: 14%
4/24: 15%

* New record
Tests have increased quite a bit. A daily record today. And a total of 1.6 million for the week. That's up 60% from two weeks ago. A big, meaningful improvement.
I would not call myself an optimist about the US's COVID position in any meaningful sense. But do think people are perhaps slightly discounting how doing more tests (a good thing!!) can make the numbers look worse/stagnant when there may be *some* improvement.
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
If you want to move in the direction of trying to control for other factors, and thereby tease out a residual for "quality of governmental response"... then I'm OK with that, at least in theory! In practice, which variables to pick from is a hard problem.
For instance, it's easy to think of some disadvantages the US has, also. Lots of international visitors. Many people with pre-existing conditions. Higher average household size than parts of W. Europe (though low compared w/other regions). Also, NYC is its own unique beast.
There's also likely to be a fair amount of almost literal randomness/stochasticity in outcomes. If a group of tourists from Bergamo decides to visit NYC rather than Toronto in February, that could make a big difference. Also, there may be different strains of the virus.
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
The fact that many peer countries are struggling with COVID-19 roughly as much as the US suggests there's some naivety to claims such as "the US could greatly improve the situation with [my proposed solution]… IF ONLY WE HAD BETTER LEADERSHIP!!!".
Among what you might consider our closest peers, the UK's outcomes have been somewhat worse than the US across a variety of metrics. Canada's have been somewhat better but are trending toward the US. Germany better (though more similar than you'd think outside NYC). France worse.
And all of these countries are struggling with the "reopening conversation" just as much as we are. This might suggest that authors of these plans are not thinking enough about what the actual political (and logistical, etc.) constraints are.
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