The Horror of the Coronavirus Data Lag
The most universal experience of the coronavirus pandemic in America might not be a sense of fear or anxiety, but a profound confusion over what exactly is going on. Novel pathogens are confounding by definition, and since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in the United States, in January, information about severity, spread, and a seemingly ever-expanding list of symptoms has trickled slowly and inconsistently out of emergency rooms and local health departments.
Conditions are improving in some of the country’s major cities, but outbreaks continue to grow in others, as well as in prisons and rural areas—especially those home to large meatpacking plants. Every state tests at a different rate, makes those tests available to different types of people, and counts its results differently in official statistics. As some states have begun to partially lift shelter-in-place orders and allow businesses such as restaurants and hair salons to reopen, one particularly high-stakes point of confusion has emerged: When can you tell if a state’s reopening guidelines are keeping infection numbers down, and how long do you have to wait before you feel sure?
[Read: Georgia’s experiment in human sacrifice]
Humans tend to think of illness as a binary. You are sick or you aren’t, which feels simple and knowable. In
