April 6: Which "curve" are we talking about?

I am not surprised that folks are confused about the apparent contradiction between "light at the end of the tunnel" and "the worst weeks are still to come", and even Dr. Fauci (with all due respect) did not do a good job explaining that... This goes together with them talking alternatively about "peaks" and about "flattening the curve". The explanation will be totally obvious to folks who have had calculus... but I will assume that that knowledge might be rusty for many at this point. What's been unclear (IMO) is that they have been talking about two different curves, and they have not bothered to explain that fact. The first curve (first picture) shows the daily number of deaths in the US. I have been showing the daily number of new cases. The shape is the same. So, what happens is that deaths (or new cases) keep increasing as the virus takes off. If measures are effective the daily number of new cases (and, later, deaths) will stop increasing. When that happens, we have reached the PEAK of curve one ... The "light at the end of the tunnel"! Assuming that that holds up (and it could stay there, as a "plateau" for a while as Cuomo has mentioned). It's good news because it shows that the virus has been slowed down. But, wait, even if we go to the other side of the curve, deaths keep happening, for a whole month according to figure 1 until, ideally, we have no new cases and, eventually, no new deaths. Let's now look at curve #2. That's for the TOTAL number of deaths! The point where curve #1 reaches the peak is the middle of the rising part of curve #2, so deaths will continue to increase until curve #1 goes to 0. At that point curve #2 has finally been "FLATTENED". So the claim being made is that they "see" the increase of deaths slowing down, at least in some area (so we may getting close to the PEAK), while at the same time we are in the middle of the rising part of curve #2 so deaths will continue .... Oh, well, I tried... For those who remember their calculus, curve one is simply the derivative of curve 2. Real data of course will look much more "messy"!

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