[samcheng]

Honestly, the most important metric is deaths, and from what I can see, the SF Bay Area has done relatively well in that metric. No overcrowded hospitals, for example.

[calebsurfs]

To me the hospitalization rate is most important.

* Overcrowded hospitals is what leads to large jumps in fatality rates.

* It only lags the date of infection by about a week.

* It also isn't subject to external factors like availability of tests. (Though availability of hospital beds is a factor later on)

[Jommi]

Yes, this is very important. But one should not forget also the avg. hospitalization time (which will go down once we have clear procedures for treating COVID in different stage)

[andfrob]

Agreed! Still not available much on a county level in the San Francisco Bay Area :(

[Jommi]

In the end, yes deaths are most important, but in order to make temporal decisions that affect that number, we need infection-related data first.

[xivzgrev]

yes, but it lags 2-3 weeks behind confirmed cases