Covid-2019 - 2021-08-09

First -- let's celebrate that today we are able to report a new milestone: 75% US adult herd immunity. On the other hand... there's an alarming US case number this morning. It is in large part "the Monday effect." Across 50 states and DC, a majority don't report cases at all for weekend days (34 failed to report on Saturday, 38 on Sunday). For Monday, only 5 failed. So this morning's 203,544 new cases nationwide, almost 4 times the average across the weekend, is mostly the result of cramming in three days of reports into one. We take certain steps to smooth out this effect for some analytic purposes and charts, but our headline US case number is always "as reported."