Ceasing Daily Reporting Effective 1 July

I will be ceasing daily reporting (or near-daily reporting due to the recent change in DC's weekend data reporting protocols) starting on 1 July. The daily report for 30 June (published on 1 July) will be the last daily report. From that point, I will do weekly reports each for Friday-Thursday, published on Friday. They include an effective daily count, by simply dividing the total growth in cases and fatalities by seven.

The decision to step back on the reporting is due to a host of factors, all generally related:


1) Case counts and fatalities are down, close to the point of being negligible when you consider the region has over 5 millions people.

2) In the case of Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax County in particular, we're starting to see a phenomenon where downward revisions of, presumably, false positive cases are as large or even larger than the confirmed cases themselves. It's essentially noise for those three jurisdictions at this point.

3) Vaccination rates (which I am not tracking) are sufficiently high that the region probably won't see a third wave, or at least a third wave of significance.

4) And perhaps most importantly, both Virginia and Maryland are going to have their respective COVID-19 states of emergency expire at the end of June 2021. No news yet on DC, but I would imagine they're not far behind. The end of the states of emergency is, in my opinion, a strong signal that the epidemiological environment has changed for the better. If the joint statement by all of the local heads of government in April 2020, urging residents to stay at home, marked the start of the local impact of the pandemic, then I would argue the the cessation of the states of emergency marks the end.

I will continue to publish monthly trends as well. And in the event that cases rise dramatically, particularly to the point that they trigger new states of emergencies, I would consider resuming daily reporting. 

It has been fascinating to track the daily ebb-and-flow of the pandemic in the region, and I thank the (few remaining) loyal readers who have bothered to continue viewing my work.

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