Last I heard, 48 of the 50 States are releasing restrictions for the lockdown at one level or another. I’m interested in what happens a couple weeks after a State releases some restrictions to see what’s working and what’s not.
After Georgia’s release of lockdown, I was surprised to see that there was not a significant increase of covid cases. I was less surprised to see that they have been accused of falsifying the data on the number of cases.
Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas saw a rise in cases after they reopened.
I’ve heard of States with cases going down after opening, but i haven’t seen articles on them.
How is your State doing? Are there other States that are doing well or poorly after reopening? Are there particular reasons for the cases to go up or down in that particular area?
I kind of wonder if maybe they should look at hospitalizations and deaths and try to extrapolate the number of infections from there, as testing is still sporadic enough to not be terribly useful for this kind of thing. For one thing, testing rates are increasing, which would also imply that all else being equal, the number of reported cases would increase. Maybe a tests:positives ratio would be more useful?
Good point. I forgot to mention that many States are saying the the number of cases is going up because of testing. So you’re right, probably using the hospitalization rates or death rates would be more indicative of the direction of the curve. I’m not sure if anyone is following that very closely though.
It (hospitalizations and deaths) is a more accurate signal, but a slower one, since there’s a delay between becoming infected and it getting bad enough to require hospitalization which is presumably longer than the delay from getting infected to having a positive test.
Not sure the tests/positives ratio is useful, unless you’re someone controlling for who is getting the tests.
I blame some in the media for this. Of course you will have an increase in new cases after you reopen!!! That would be true if we waited another six months or another year.
This is almost like 1984. Nobody said that the virus would be over and then we would go out. We were “flattening the curve” so that our hospitals were not swamped. Once we got that under control, it was all but stated that yes, for a long damned time people will continue to get sick and continue to die from this thing.
But now these twats in the media are acting like this was totally unexpected and that nobody should be reopening because new cases are rising. They were always going to.
I just posted in another thread that Denmark is not seeing an increase in cases after 4 1/2 seeks after reopening, but they don’t know why.
From what I’ve seen, no one, including Denmark, was expecting that. People expect an increase in cases. They’re hoping that the increase in cases doesn’t spike like it did in NY at the start of this.
For this thread, I’m trying to track which State(s) have been the most successful in keeping the cases low and the potential reasons that it might have happened. As has been pointed out, new cases might not be a good stat to follow since people are claiming that the reason for new cases in increased testing. I’m continuing to look for articles that are monitoring this activity more accurately.
Yeah, but that’s Denmark which, IIRC has about 5 million people, a huge landmass, and border controls. Imagine West Virginia with border controls. It’s no wonder that they can control the spread.
You just cannot extrapolate that to a Florida or a Texas with no border controls so that sick New Yorkers can flock there for a beach vacation.
Norway has the same experience. So does Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic etc. I actually think that is the most common pattern. Once again, media skewers the perceptions of what is happening because they focus on whats wrong and do not mention places where things are going well.
I do think its clear that easing up is more complicated and tricky than locking down. But mostly it seems to work.
You have to look at graphs of the data over time and compare them against other states and countries. It’s not particularly useful reading anecdotal articles about localized increases and decreases.
Even accounting for “fudging”, Georgia never hit more than 1000 new cases a day.
The media keeps saying how discounting NY metro area (NY/NJ/CT), cases are still rising. But the NY metro area accounted for an overwhelming number of cases.
Exactly. That’s why I’m looking for what’s happening by State and what about the State could be accounting for that. You’ve just named a few of the reasons that Denmark might be doing better than some of the States in the US like less population density, stricter border controls, etc. There’s also the fact that Denmark locked down early and hard, and had a plan.
Some of the US States are opening when the stats are increasing and some of them have more densely populated urban areas. How are these States faring and is their economy reviving as a result?
From what I read, and I’m not following all that closely, those countries that are doing better, locked down early and with a lot of control and a plan. Now that they’re reopening, the increases are not showing as much. But there are countries where the cases are coming back. I was reading that China and S. Korea are having more infection. Other countries like UK, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Sweden haven’t really gone down to the level of the countries you mentioned…
I’m interested to see if this same pattern will hold true in the States. Some States locked down early with strict orders. Others were pretty late to the game and are reopening earlier as well. Some are densely populated with a lot of international travel normally. Others are very rural with hardly any international travel. All of those factors will make a difference, I expect. But there are other factors as well, I’m sure.
A big factor is also how they are “re-opening”. It’s not a binary lockdown vs open, there are degrees of openness. And there’s the factor of human compliance. One state where everyone wears a mask, maintains social distancing, and doesn’t linger in the stores will see fewer infections than a state where people are going “Mah RughtS!” and refusing to wear masks, congregating in large numbers, and spending hours hanging out at the bars.
I imagine that Denmark is much closer to one end of that spectrum than the other. Some US states? No so much.
Yeah, but you know as well as I do that there is reporting and there is “reporting.” These hacks are in it for the shock value and not for simple conveyance of news. Wouldn’t an ethical journalist include that this was to be expected in any reopening, whether today or six months from now?
The question is which States should be compared with which other States and countries and why. That’s where the anecdotal comes in. In some places, the culture is standoffish and people don’t get too physically close. In other places, people are in your face all the time. Some place are more rural where you have to get in a car. Other places are more urban where you have to travel with everyone else. Looking at the numbers can only say so much about the data. Beyond that, you’d have to know a little about the place or at least make some guesses about it.
Looking at Georgia, is 1,000 new cases a day a little or a lot. Compared to what? And why?
For sure. But wouldn’t it be weird if a State that was the furthest away on the spectrum from Denmark also had a decline in cases? You’d have to be able to account for that. Could it happen? I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to track in this thread.
