Great analogy!
I’m sure you realize that the different states are in charge of how they respond to Covid, particularly with respect to when and how to open and close business, if or how to enforce mask usage, and on and on.
One state can have vastly different responses to a state right next door. So of course it makes more sense to look at the US as a collection of 50 “entities” with respect to analyzing Covid-19.
You might have a point if there was a coordinated and well functioning federal response at a higher level; unfortunately there is not anything like this.
I expect death rates to rise about three weeks after infection rates rise. This is just now getting past three weeks of when the rise of new cases started to really steepen in Florida and Texas both. From here on is where I expect the death rate increases to become unmistakable trends and to become increasingly steeper and to be prolonged. Changing things now, to the degree it actually happens, will take three weeks before having any impact on new death rates. The rise to be for the next three weeks, whatever it is to be, is cast. And in states in which leadership had declared victory early on and in which refusing to alter behaviors is now part of political and cultural identity for a large segment, especially in rural counties with higher risk individuals and not much health system capacity, I don’t see any executive order edicts doing too much to quickly. You don’t turn an ocean liner on a dime.
To the rest, I just require stronger data than you do to call something evidence. I am very aware that my expecting to see something can predispose me to see something before the data really declares it, so am especially cautious when early numbers conform to my expectations.
Doesn’t the data of one week ago include the dump of all the probables into the system? I’m just looking at this graph, which doesn’t exclude any states, and it doesn’t look good.
Three days more is definitely showing a different graph. Ooof.
I’m well aware of the fact that different states have their own public health responses, but my point is, it shouldn’t necessarily be that way. Brazil, Russia, and China are large countries, with a lot of regional variation, and yet we pretty much look at their data in toto.
Federal failures are contributing as much to the failures in specific states just as much as the individual states’ responses. Failures to come up with a coherent national strategy. Failures to have any consistent testing.
Absolutely correct.
The state responses did not HAVE to be a jumbled mess of incoherence. But there was a complete lack of leadership or competency at the federal level. The federal failures are a huge contributor.
I knew you knew this already, but I just wanted to point out why it’s flawed to somehow minimize the failures of the US response by pointing out local or regional successes. I’d argue that it’s our unending attempt to find the bright side to this story that is perpetuating and exacerbating this disaster, as it rolls from one state to the next.
One of the benefits of a dual federal system is that it can focus its own local level resources and build on whatever foundation has been laid at the national level in terms of public health. Not only has our current administration’s national response been woefully inept, but it has also been compounded by similarly inept responses at the state level, owing mainly to a ‘know nothing’ political ideology.
Yes again. I’d go a little further, and call it an ideology that actually knows better, but deliberately chooses the path that will cause disease and death, for political reasons. I don’t think they’re ignorant. I think they’re sociopathic.
From the Washington Post:
Nationwide, new cases reached record levels in states across the United States over the weekend, even as weekly testing plateaued. Seven-day averages for new cases hit new highs in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico. Deaths were trending sharply up in nearly every major region of the country.
(Emphasis Mine)
So the deaths are now catching up which I think answers the OP in a manner that anyone who didn’t see coming might have had a partisan slant.
The deaths always lag infections by a few weeks if not more, so shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone.
We’ve got about 5-8 weeks to get our shit together, or we’re going to start seeing COVID-19 surges combined with the first wave of influenza. If schools across the country go ahead with reopening as planned, it’s going to a shit show for the ages.
Just in time for the projected second wave once things start to get cold again. It’s already a shit show for the ages. We are now on the cusp of a cluster fuck of biblical proportions…
Was New York a cluster fuck of biblical proportions? Or, I mean, was the devastation there of biblical proportions? Don’t you think that’s about as bad as it will get anywhere, no matter what we do?
No, it was a shit show for the ages. Biblical scale would be hundreds of thousands of dead in New York city and a complete collapse of not just the medical system but of society. Think black death levels of dysfunction.
No, it’s not nearly as bad as it could be, here or anywhere else, though Brazil is pretty close. And I don’t think this is a matter of ‘no matter what we do’, as, to my mind, we haven’t really done what we could or should have done. But right now, we are courting some serious repercussions, again IMHO, because we decided to open early and in an unsafe manner, and, frankly, we didn’t take this thing nearly as seriously as we should of. Part of that (a big part) is our current leadership, but part of that is our own stubborn individualism. And we are going to pay the price for both of those, as we have not even gotten out of the first wave yet, there isn’t a vaccine on the horizon (I’ve heard MAYBE March for 100 million doses, assuming things go well), and we are rapidly approaching the flu season…which is when the second wave is also predicted to kick off, so could be a double wammy. Then there is the potential for yet another pandemic in good old China with the swine flu happening while massive flooding and gods know what else is happening there. So…biblical levels of cluster fuck seem like they could happen, though maybe it will just continue being a dumpster fire shit show.
But what I am saying is, perhaps I have this wrong but, isn’t New York very, very clearly out of their ‘first wave’?
No, they aren’t because the states around them aren’t. You can’t look at a state in isolation because no state is really isolated. You can’t even look at a nation that way, because unless they have zero connection to the outside they are still affected by what is going on around them and can be reinfected, especially if and when conditions change. New York successfully flattened their curve, and even got it to go down, but on the whole the US never really got out of the first wave, and right now it’s more like a slight down trend and now back up to as high as it was at the peak and moving up past that. Unless New York can build a wall around itself and not allow people from outside of the state or even the city in they are going to be tied into what’s happening in the rest of the country…just like the rest of the country is and was tied into what was happening there.
If a ‘local area’, if that’s okay to say, has a major spike and then a steep drop, only later to be reinfected by new members, is that not a prime example of a ‘second wave’? If not, how are there separate waves at all?
How low of a level do you look? Would a county that got a bunch of cases, then came down, then back up have a second wave? A village? The block I live on?
Or, doesn’t it make more sense to look at the level where there are no borders, at the national level?
Well, there are effective borders, meaning that a sick person in New York isn’t going to infect someone in Detroit. What I am getting at is the idea that maybe the majority of people in New York were exposed to the virus, and who knows, maybe even the great majority. If that is the case, then you’d expect their result to be just about as bad it can get anywhere, from Arizona to Florida. And I just don’t know that ‘biblical’ would at all be in play, in that case.