Statewide positivity was down in the data from Tuesday. This again speaks to the reason for examining the moving average. The smoother line adds value in terms of understanding the trajectory. The positivity rate for susceptible test encounters is below.
The moving average continues its upward march which is natural. The centered aspect means we are looking at 7 days on either side of the date which means the graph shows a bit of what happened in the recent past and what is going to happen. That is one of the reasons why I like this measure. When we look at the overall number of tests we get another similar picture.
The moving average continues the same march higher as we would expect.
Just talking about the math right now it is going to take a consistent set of lower positivity rates to move the moving average lower. The smoothness comes at the expense of quick turns, because that is what it is designed to tackle. From a policy perspective that would seem to be important too. I do not think we want policy dictated by daily measures, they are simply too volatile. Better that we look at the smoothed measures that reduce some of the daily volatility when formulating policy.
