Saturday numbers are in and I’m getting worried about Texas.

Across much of the South, the disease spread has turned down.

Arizona, South Carolina, Florida, even Mississippi look somewhat better than they did a week ago.

That’s good.

One state looks worse:

Texas

Thread

Texas had been doing better.

They HAD clearly turned the corner. But no more.

Let’s look at data (all 7-day moving avg)

In late June, Governor Abbott took action.

And it appeared to work.

2/n

Around 7/17, Texas peaked with (7d MA) 9600 cases, 56K tests, 18% tests positive

For rest of July, tests increased, cases fell, and + positives fell. Good stuff.

7/30, Texas was at nearly 70K tests, + now only 11%, and they were finding about 7200 cases per day

All good

3/5

But early days of August are not going well

Testing now down 40% in last 9 days, cases are flat to a bit up, but here's the red flag:

test positives now 19.4%

2nd worst in nation after Mississippi

Deaths are still rising (a lot) but those represent early July infections

4/5

So what explains the past week?

1 Huge drop in testing

2 Behavior: OpenTable data finds restaurant reservations, which fell in 1st half of July, is now up again to June levels

Overall, I worry TX letting foot off the brakes.

And the disease is still spreading too fast

Fin