Keeping up with the numbers

[Igel]

4. You won't get that inflection until most countries are past their maximum.

Italy accounts for almost half the deaths.

US is down for the last couple of days, but early figures this morning are the same as yesterday's today, so it may be that there were delays in reporting and the curve hasn't changed much. Or maybe the curve's flattening, which is what to look for. But as it spreads, it will get better first in some countries, and later in others, so the overall numbers will mask the improvement.

Averages do that. SAT scores sank for years and the media had a field day with bashing the educational system. But the students who traditionally would have taken the SAT had their scores increasing, when you disaggregated the data. And lower achieving students still had their overall scores increasing slightly over that time. But the mix of students changed year over year, so more lower achieving students were added to the mix. Everybody was doing better but the average was plummeting. Sometimes aggregating your data leads to the wrong conclusion.