[semantic]

Italy is starting to exhibit the classic pattern of a top. It's now 5 days off the high, and wandering out up/down on a plateau. Not to say it can't jump again, but each successive flat pattern makes it that much more difficult for the line to climb again due to he sheer volume of numbers/days already recorded. (Some call it the 'law of large numbers'.)

Because NY was distorting US stats, this shows the pattern of US less NY. As we can see, if we peg 8 future days to Italy (they are 8 days ahead of us), then our pattern begins to flatten out as well. Again, key caveat is that NYC might still be growing (rapidly), but this also suggests regionality ie high specificity.

		Italy	60.5		IT v US		USA-NY	310.9	
Day	Date	Cum Total	% Chg	Daily	Ratio	Date	Cum Total	% Chg	Daily
									
1	2/21/2020	1		1	1.0	2/29/2020	1		1

30	3/21/2020	4,825	19.7%	793	3.9	3/29/2020	1,237	19.7%	203
31	3/22/2020	5,475	13.5%	650	3.9	3/30/2020	1,404	13.5%	167
32	3/23/2020	6,077	11.0%	602	3.9	3/31/2020	1,558	11.0%	154
33	3/24/2020	6,820	12.2%	743	3.9	4/1/2020	1,749	12.2%	191
34	3/25/2020	7,503	10.0%	683	3.9	4/2/2020	1,924	10.0%	175
									
	Gross differential				3.9				
	Population differential				5.1				
	Per capita differential				20.0				
									
Growth rate									
26	Days		35.1%					28.2%	
34	Days		30.0%					24.9%	
									
Sources									
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_States									
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy	

[crusty old prospector]

Just look the logarithmic plot on Worldometer for Italy and Spain. Thus begins the flattening.