Clustering U.S counties by their COVID-19 curves

Analytics has become a part of everyone's daily routine as a result of the pandemic. Every day we look at curves of new cases, positivity rates, and a range of other metrics that give us insight into our current situation. One interesting metric used by the CDC, along with many news networks and publications is hotspot classification. A hotspot is a county or state where cases are currently increasing at a relatively high rate [1]. This metric is simple and easy to understand. But it leaves out a lot of interesting details.