is it a third wave.....or did the can that was kicked in certain areas....finally stop moving?

Comparing national stats to regional stats doesn't seem all that helpful for gauging the expansion of the virus.

Some regions are experiencing second waves . . . .some are rural areas are getting hit for the first time. Maybe that adds up to a 3rd wave but it is not a helpful stat for the average person.

It's their first wave.

All of the extreme closures have just postponed the spread, not sure what everyone expected. The virus will not be eradicated anytime soon so while keeping everyone in total lockdown slows the spread it does not stop the spread and as soon as people begin to move again the spread rate jumps. It is such common sense that it baffles me how much craziness this has caused.

Not in Sweden.

Aka keeping everyone at home actually worked at keeping people from getting COVID because it punted the football down the road. Now we are supposed to be surprised that people are getting sick from something they haven't been exposed to?

And if it is a 2nd or 3rd wave, don't you also expect to see that as well?

What constitutes a wave? Number of positive tests, number of hospitlizations, number of fatalities, positivitiy rate....? How much time must transpire between waves?

When I look at the epi chart for Harris county, I see one wave or peak, June to early July, but many think of that as the 2nd wave/2nd peak.

Too many people are looking at the entire country as a single entity which is utterly stupid - like looking at Europe as a single entity. We are seeing regional waves, as the diseases progresses around the country. The northeast got hammered hard at first, the south in the summer, and now the less-populated states are seeing their first big infection waves. But I'm not aware of a single geographic area/CBSA that hit a peak and dropped significantly, and then rose back to a similar peak - i.e. a "second" wave.

jenn96 said:

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Too many people are looking at the entire country as a single entity which is utterly stupid - like looking at Europe as a single entity. We are seeing regional waves, as the diseases progresses around the country. The northeast got hammered hard at first, the south in the summer, and now the less-populated states are seeing their first big infection waves. But I'm not aware of a single geographic area/CBSA that hit a peak and dropped significantly, and then rose back to a similar peak - i.e. a "second" wave.

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So much this. Dallas, Houston, Texas in general saw their actual 1st wave in July and August. We've been relatively flat in hospital admissions for COVID-19 since late August/early September. In East Texas we are sitting at about 40%-50% of our peak, not getting much lower or higher. Just steady.

New York did not see a big spike after the protests. It seems like it ran its course, at least with the more vulnerable population.

Small towns and smaller cities largely spared for the first several months of the outbreak are now seeing outbreaks. It's just how viruses spread.