We want to see the daily hospitalizations & deaths going down. The the reason for this 05/01/20 spike is that the state of CT reported its cumulative hospitalizations for the first time.
Conclusions from a few studies have suggested that COVID-19 is actually 28-85x more widespread than reported due to untested positives. If so, the death rate on this chart would be significantly reduced.
This chart attempts to show the change in number of deaths since the previous snapshot of data. It's a little bit tricky to make this chart work because the snapshots are somewhat irregular currently, but I will try to see if I can get them close to being daily numbers - which periods may not quite coincide with the top Daily charts. In any case, the information is somewhat relative.
It is interesting that the percentages of tests that are positive vary widely by state, with some states testing less than 3% positive and some testing more than 40% positive initially. Assuming that the tests performed are mostly limited to those with symptoms, this may imply that some areas have significant occurrences of other non-COVID-19 illnesses; or that the spread is much more widespread in the high areas; or even that the virus had previously spread earlier than expected in the lower areas like CA. A higher percentage has seemed to indicate the states that are or will be "hot spots".
For reference, here is how the some of the COVID-19 statistics compare with the Spanish Flu and the last decade of influenza.
The number of influenza cases and deaths each year is quite high. It would seem that a difference in the COVID-19 strain on the healthcare systems is due to the timing and geographical concentration compared to influenza cases.
Following is a table of some relevant statistics sorted by state code, alphabetically:
Observations: