C19 Regionally

Nate Silver had an interesting, if incomplete observation.

I've started to think of the U.S. as 2-3 countries as far as COVID goes. The Northeast looks like Spain/Italy (steep peak/decline). The South looks like Brazil or Russia where things didn't start out badly but have simmered. The Midwest looks like Canada: lots of local hotspots.

I keep thinking the replies over at 538 are going to be better-than-average. Maybe, because "average" may be even worse than I imagine. But they aren't good and I recommend you move off them ASAP. The map that is currently a few posts down is a little deceiving because it only focuses on whether cases are increasing or decreasing, not the overall numbers, and it does not note how much of this is due to increase in testing.  VT has had very low numbers but is now increasing, for example, making it look like things are falling apart. Not yet, anyway. The states that have had a lot of cases have done a lot of testing of high-risk and high-impact people already.  New tests are less likely to be positive, because they are done on different populations.  In contrast, places like Texas and California are now getting on track with more testing and are of course targeting the people they think most likely to be a problem or have a problem, so their increase in cases, while important to watch, isn't quite so dire as the colors would indicate.  Not yet, anyway.

Last week a lot of the conservative press got obsessed over the hypocrisy of encouraging protests despite the risk.  There was the usual excessive rhetoric about political things, of the nature of "you said I was killing grandma if I had a barbecue and now look at downtown," which to my mind obscures a very good point. "Increased risk" and "killing grandma" are not synonymous. Perhaps screaming like that gets your message out better, and I just don't like it. We are likely to see a delay in any increase in C19 directly due to protests or openings, because in both cases those groups will skew younger.  Their contact with people who are older or at risk will be more gradual and indirect. That's not a bad thing at all, but just something to be aware of when following the numbers. I will note again that whether government officials and the media are biased hypocrites can be infuriating, but is not something the virus knows anything about.  It doesn't ramp up or lay off depending on the political beliefs of its victims.  Fairly obvious, but one would get the opposite impression from reading the news. 

Sweden and the Hong Kong Flu are no longer mentioned.