Just before the state of the union, the CDC changed the criteria for substantial community transmission from 50 cases/100,000 over a 7 day period to 200 cases/100,000 over a 7-day period. So the entire country went from orange or red to green overnight.

COVID didn't become less transmissible overnight. Trust me. We are, unfortuantely, allowing public/political opinion to drive our health care policies & recommendations. Dr. Jha's recommendation is based on the new (artificially low) criteria.

As for when it will be accurate - in my county we are almost certainly there now - even using the current misleading criteria. We were at 84 cases/100,000 in 7 days in the next to last report (5/5), and at 135 cases/100,000 in 7 days in the last report (5/12). By the numbers I'm running (which are very close to the official numbers), as of today (5/19) we're at 227 cases/100,000 over the last 7 days.

And - the number of cases reported is currently well below the actual number of cases (as has been confirmed in places which do wastewater testing). People aren't testint as much, and some people who are testing are doing home testing and not reporting it. So there are significantly more cases than either the numbers or the inaccurately labeled low community transmission acknowledge.