Thread by @covidtweets

Cases are dropping faster than they ever have since the beginning of the pandemic, currently at a rate of around 3.5% per day.

In addition, the current drop is the longest consistent decline since the beginning.

But, the variant... (1/5)

It has been almost two months since Slavitt said we actually had the variant spreading but we were not testing for it. Almost four weeks since Topol said 4th surge was coming.

If this new variant is actually this big of a deal, I think we would have seen it by now. (2/5)

This chart shows the smoothened curve of % change in moving average (MA). Anytime it is 0+, it means MA of cases is increasing, and below zero means decreasing. The bigger the value, the faster the change.

MA is dropping since early January at an accelerating pace. (3/5)

Another insight: Even though MA mostly increased between mid-September and mid-January, the rate of increase has actually been slowing down since early November, except for two brief periods (orange rectangles - likely holiday testing bumps). (4/5)

This chart will give us the earliest signal of a possible 4th wave, so I will keep watching. However, I am currently not seeing any signs of a more infectious variant in this data. (5/5)