I measure the amount of covering off (or adding) against the amount of shares trading on a daily basis....the actual drop between the July 31st and Aug 15th updates was 59,901 which is pretty much an entire's days trading a lot of the time.

We've only had 3 days this month with volume of 100K or more, and there have been 6 days with total volume of less than 60K.  

So the new number for trades settled up to August 15th is 471,289....and my own opinion is that a chunk of that is with Market Makers.  How big a chunk?  I don't know, maybe half on the high side imo. 

You are right, I do tend to obsess over short interest....oh well.  FWIW I find the updated numbers reassuring...I think today's gap down at the open was just tree shaking, and given the 76K trading today I would guess it worked a little.