by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Very interesting differences in here at the start of this series. Some of the data was extremely noisy originally due to low case counts, but all except California showed a material positive slope in the effective infection rate and then all rolled over before the mitigation measures went into effect, and have continued since.
Note — this is the effective “R” value on that day. Since we know infections are always retrospective (that is, if you get infected today it takes time for you to get sick, and then more time to show up at the hospital) if you want to know when someone was infected shift that time line back 5-10 days. So for the nominal peak in NY on March 21st, approximately, those infections happened between the 11th and 15th of March.
In every case this places the peak infection rate several days before the lockdowns and other coercive measures. This does not mean that the advice to “socially distance” and specifically to wash your damn hands had no effect — it might have. But it does mean that in every case those coercive measures did nothing.