Comparing the rate of deaths from C-19 in the US week over week, the rate of growth of deaths declined from 620% last week to 153% this week.  The rate of deaths is still growing in the US.  Deaths more than doubled in the last 7 days.  But 153% growth is better than 620% growth.  The curve is flattening.  We need to keep doing what we are doing until the growth rate is 0% or turns negative.  We are not out of danger yet.

Data source:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Death stats are the best stats we have and they are pretty good. It is the most reliable data available. Docs and hospitals report deaths routinely…the measurement system is in place. It is not important whether the person died solely because of C-19…because we can never be certain of cause of death even if each dead patient had an full autopsy (which would be impossible.) On the other hand, if they died AND tested positive, we have a reliable statistic which we can then compare with ongoing statistical death rate trends from other diseases.

It is not necessary to have an independent variable to do reliable statistics, in fact that almost never happens. Statistics requires reliable, reproducible sampling. Statistics on new C-19 cases, infection rate, recovery rate etc are skewed by variability in the availability of tests, lack of knowledge about symptom-free transmission, re-infection rate, mutation rate, date of first community transmission, etc.