July 16 Remains the Day COVID-19 Hit America the Hardest

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Oct 19, 7:45AM EDT

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July 16 Remains the Day COVID-19 Hit America the Hardest — © Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States has risen to the point where the county has entered what is being called a “third wave.” The first wave peaked in April when cases topped 30,000 for a few days. The second stretched from early July until mid-August. On some days in this second period, about 60,000 confirmed cases were posted. The most recent wave started in early October and continues. The hardest-hit day in this current period was October 16, when cases numbered 70,461. That still does not match July 16, when confirmed cases reached 75,682, the American record.
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There is a debate about July 16. The New York Times put the confirmed case count that day at 75,682. Reuters put the count at 77,217. The difference is not unusual. There are several sources of reliable data on confirmed and fatal cases. The Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard may be the most often cited, but the Times figures are used by the media. Microsoft has its Bing COVID-19 Tracker, which is well-sourced and used often.

The July 16 count helped set two milestones. The first is that the peak it formed set the stage for the sharp drop that hit a bottom around Labor Day, when new confirmed cases dropped below 25,000. This caused some experts to say that COVID-19 infection rates had slowed enough so that the fall and winter would not be a period of devastation, even though cold weather can be a trigger for the spread of viruses.
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The second hallmark of the peak on July 16 has become more evident recently. Will U.S. confirmed cases start to run above the daily record day on a regular basis as people move indoors and COVID-10 “fatigue” causes more and more people to be careless about critical social distancing and mask wearing? Today’s trajectory of confirmed cases would indicate that daily figures could not only move about 75,000 daily, but they could surge to 80,000 or more.

On July 16, the second wave was mostly in states that had not been hit hard in the first wave. The first wave spread during March, April and May and was worst in the Northeast, particularly New York State, Connecticut and New Jersey. The June, July and August second wave was mostly due to cases in Florida, California, Texas, Arizona and the Carolinas. The current, third wave is characterized by the fact that three-quarters of the country has just posted daily highs for confirmed cases. In that sense, COVID-19 is more out of control than at any earlier period.

July 16 may be the record, but that will not last for long. If experts are correct, the United States is in for daily case numbers above 70,000.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.