It's very useful to keep in mind that “deaths today” are related to “infections some time ago.”
Consider:
If we take
Mortality = 2%
Time from infection to death = 20 days
Doubling time = 3.3 days
then each new death today is associated with 50 new infections 20 days ago and 3200 new infections today.
Now for the last 20 days, California has almost surely had a doubling time for new infections of no less than 10 days so each death today should be associated with no more than 200 new infections today. Given that California is currently hovering around 30 to 40 new deaths per day, that would suggest that we are seeing no more than 6000 to 8000 new infections each day.
And if we JUST barely managed to peak in infections around March 19 with a new doubling time of -20 days that turns into 750 to 1000 new infections today.