Keegan99 said:
Travis County Population - 1.3 Million
Travis County Detected Infections - 17k (~1.3% of population)
Harris County Population - 4.7 Million
Harris County Detected Infections - 57k (~1.2% of population)
Both are peaking when a little more than 1% of their population has a detected infection.
This projects to somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of the population actually being infected. Which is right about where one would expect a peak for burnout at about 20% of the population.
I'd like to buy all that - the estimates of actual positives calculated from confirmed positives, it's peaking at 10%, the burnout is 20% - I really would. And it may be close to accurate. But with mask orders, bars closing again, people not back to work or school, probably 30% of people who have almost made it impossible for themselves to get any illness because they never go anywhere - it's hard to point to any one thing when a peak or decline happens. Someone else could make time since the July 4th holiday, or time since mask order, or time since bars closing the cause by saying "see, it's 2 weeks later" and it would be hard to refute since these are guesses.
If we hadn't changed behavior at all and watched the rise, peak, and decline in fully opened/unregulated societies that would seem more clear cut to me. Hard to explain low and flat rates in TX march to June, then the big rise after some relaxing of rules and people getting tired of getting cooped up, then a flattening after some rules reimplemented as solely due to the virus's r0 and burnout rates.
I say all that when I secretly want to believe the 20% thing. I've also guesstimated the actual cases as maybe 10x confirmed. But my fear is it's wishful thinking.