Anything other than an objective calendar point-to-point series comparison requires one to make "assumptions". Why 12 days instead of 18, why not 24 days? 8 days is 8 days since the start of each respective country's CV mortality experience. If anything, the US should be doing better than Italy. That is, we had them & Iran as examples, which gave us more time to prepare. I would imagine most would believe we have a better, more adaptable HCS, and presumably our demographics are less vulnerable (age, smoking, health).
It turns out that 18 days is merely the result they were looking for aka goal seeking. They set a target and went about finding the date(s) to fit the curve. Speaking of which, I think a lot of people would be surprised at just how flat Italy has been:
Date Day Daily
3/20/2020 29 627
3/21/2020 30 793
3/22/2020 31 650
3/23/2020 32 602
3/24/2020 33 743
3/25/2020 34 683
3/26/2020 35 712
3/27/2020 36 919
3/28/2020 37 889
3/29/2020 38 756
3/30/2020 39 812
3/31/2020 40 837
4/1/2020 41 727
4/2/2020 42 760
4/3/2020 43 766
4/4/2020 44 681
This essentially flat day-day plateau is also reflected in US stats if we remove NY, which is now almost 43% of all US total CV deaths (day 36, 2/29-4/4):
However, the biggest 'tell' of all is how the promoters have moved into negotiation - and a little bit of anger - in trying to rationalize why they were wrong. OTOH, maybe they were actually right, and the results we're now seeing are the result of the lock-down and social distancing policies.
Those are all great topics for discussion, and will launch 1000s of PhD theses in the coming years. But, for now, the main idea is to start living again.
IMHO with our mitigation efforts in place this country is “flat” as you say, minus the NYC area. Let’s hope the rest of the country stays that way, NYC “burns out” and we can begin to emerge after Easter. I do believe I heard Fauci say the “top” is some 6-7 days away.
Yesterday was the the day that IHME was supposed to update the model, which hasn't been updated since April 1. After promising for several days to check back on April 4 for the updated model, the new message is
"As the pandemic progresses, we are working to incorporate new data about the virus in the US.The model has not been updated. The hospitalization projections have been way off. They are hiding something or they are changing the model itself.