# What state governments are acknowledged as handling this well? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [July 23, 2020, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-state-governments-are-acknowledged-as-handling-this-well/916085 "2020-07-23T07:37:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 76
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2020, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-state-governments-are-acknowledged-as-handling-this-well/916085/76 "2020-07-26T05:20:16Z")
> [@agzem](#): > > I don’t think you need to worry too much about Florida going from **6.29** to **118.2** No? Do you not understand how exponential growth works? And for the record, we had this [same discussion](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-counter-the-the-flu-v-covid-19-argument/849427/17) about exponential growth back in March. Note that when the following article was written, nobody – zero people – had died yet in New York, but within **one month** New York’s death rate would reach its peak – the peak you don’t think Florida needs to worry about – and within two months nearly 30,000 people would die in New York. [When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/10/coronavirus-what-matters-isnt-what-you-can-see-what-you-cant/) > **[Opinion | When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/10/coronavirus-what-matters-isnt-what-you-can-see-what-you-cant/)** > > We can fight it, but the virus is here, and it is spreading quickly, even though everything looks normal. > [@](#): > > "There’s an old brain teaser that goes like this: You have a pond of a certain size, and upon that pond, a single lilypad. This particular species of lily pad reproduces once a day, so that on day two, you have two lily pads. On day three, you have four, and so on. > > Now the teaser. “If it takes the lily pads 48 days to cover the pond completely, how long will it take for the pond to be covered halfway?” > > The answer is 47 days. Moreover, at day 40, you’ll barely know the lily pads are there. > > That grim math explains why so many people — including me — are [worried about](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/10/coronavirus-live-updates/?itid=lk_inline_manual_7) the novel coronavirus, which causes a disease known as covid-19. And why so many other people think we are panicking over nothing. > > …But go back to those lily pads: When something dangerous is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t." You know, it’s one thing to be having these kinds of discussions back in March, when only a handful of people had died in the U.S. I can’t believe we’re still having this discussion after 150,000 people have died here in the United States. We went through hell here in the northeast over the last four months. It’s the reason why most of us are still taking the virus very seriously and why many of us are still locked down. Yet many people in Florida, Texas and throughout the south and west still seem convinced that the virus won’t affect them, and refuse to take simple public health measures, like mask-wearing and social distancing. What’s maddening about this is the simple fact that if we had all locked down effectively and simultaneously throughout the nation, we could have all but eliminated the virus in the U.S., just like in Europe, and not only restarted our economy but also saved a lot of lives. Instead, we keep doing these sequential half-measures as the virus flares up in different parts of the country, so the virus will keep hopscotching around the country indefinitely. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-state-governments-are-acknowledged-as-handling-this-well/916085)._