It seems to me that each country has its own story and America has many stories-within-the-story too. We don't know how each story will end nor do we know when or where a new story might begin.
If you are constantly looking for evidence which supports your belief that this epidemic is no big deal, or if you are looking for evidence which supports your belief that this epidemic is going to kill millions of Americans, you are going about this all wrong. You're leading with your heart, not your head.
There are plenty of reasons to remain hopeful that our precautionary measures have halted the exponential spread, and there are enough examples where outbreaks have been slowed almost to a stop. And there are plenty of reasons to look at what's happened in New York/New Jersey, Detroit, and New Orleans and to worry that it might happen in a city near you. We are an unpredictable animal dealing with an incalculable and poorly understood virus.
For weeks, the daily death rate in America has been doubling every three days. If that steady increase doesn't slow within three weeks, we will be losing a hundred thousand souls each day. I really think our precautionary measures will bend that curve down before that, but I still don't presume to guess when we'll peak. Italy has seemed to be peaking for twelve days now with daily deaths fluctuating between 600 and 900 souls. Yesterday we had 7 less deaths than their worst day which came for them after their curve had noticeably slowed. I'll feel a heck of a lot better if our curve starts softening.
Europe on the other hand i'm having trouble trusting only slightly more than China. I think anyone who wishes to minimise the danger will seize upon any reportedly true fact or opinion or prediction to buttress their comforting state of denial. I believe the EU report that deaths overall are down, is exactly that. And on the other side of that, doctors and nurses who are watching their patients die aren't opportunistically capitalising on their deaths to advance conspiracies of the like.
France for instance hadn't reported covid19 deaths in old age homes but are now beginning to do so. No doubt the numbers will significantly shoot up. But moreover, this is just an example of where the "deniers" love to make hay on the marginality issue. They want to say that the virus was merely the straw which broke the camel's back and blame every other piece of straw for the death.
I'm not completely unsympathetic to the argument. I don't think we ought to be counting people who are already carrying a massive load of other straw, and blame the deaths completely on the one which broke the camel's back. But these people seem intent on always blaming the other illnesses for the death, just so they can insist, "see, it's not so bad!"
Sometimes the Covid straw is as heavy of a burden as the other comorbities and the patient would easily have survived had they not gotten the virus. Marginality is key to every economic or societal issue, why should we disregard the marginal straw in matters of life and death?
