Thread by @Neoavatara

I think one thing a lot of people are misinterpreting is the fact that some states (NY, NJ, MI) are seeing decreasing disease and death rates.

This isn't necessarily because they are doing a better job overall.

These states are not doing a spectacular job of testing, tracking and tracing to get their decreased rates.

What they did was...have the most vulnerable in their population die.

Because the elderly, etc died at such a high rate in these states in March and April, the rates have plummeted for a simple reason: the most susceptible patients...are no longer alive.

What we are seeing in many states (especially AZ) is the tail end of the FIRST WAVE.

Their most susceptible patients didn't see the virus in April...but started getting infected in mid-May.

Those are the patients now falling ill and dying.

In short, what you would expect if you flattened the curve from March...is steady infection rates, spread out over months.

On the other hand, if you failed to flatten the curve, you saw a huge peak, with huge death rates, followed by a rapid decrease...as we are seeing in NY.

This doesn't mean states like AZ are doing well. They have failed to use the time they had to establish good monitoring systems.

But it also doesn't mean that states like NY 'succeeded'. Every location in the world that was horrific saw rapid drop offs. That is not success.

Also, see what is happening in Beijing.

This disease will be back. It will return in all these places.

Arrogance is a trait we should put away, because this virus is likely to make a fool of all of us sooner or later.

Just for perspective, NY has a death rate of 1600/million.

Arizona about 160/million.

For Arizona to have the same death rate as NY....they would need another 5k deaths or so.

As bad as AZ is, that is unlikely.

But the way... People want to consider this A SUCCESS?