Thread by @ashishkjha

In the news craziness, you might have missed bombshell from the CDC Director

In a swipe at Dr. Fauci, @CDCDirector Dr Redfield claimed explosion of cases in the South NOT due to opening up too much / too fast.

So what does Dr. Redfield think it is? Its the northerners

Thread

That's right, Dr. Redfield says folks from the north drove down south for vacation at end of May, after Memorial Day, and infected southerners.

He offers no evidence. Says “everything happened around June 12-16”

So can we glean anything from the data?

Is he right?

2/6

Did all the southern states uniformly explode around June 12 – 16 uniformly, as Dr. Redfield claims?

Here's the @CNBC article quoting him

cnbc.com/2020/07/14/cdc…

And here's the original interview with Dr. Bauchner. Around 26:10,

Did these states explode around June 12–16 , as Dr. Redfield claims?

NO

First, infection rates don’t explode around June 12 to 16

Most of southern states saw infections start rising around June 1, about a week after MD weekend started

Not June 12-16 as Bob Redfield says

4/6

But here’s the kicker

Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, also start rising around the same time -- within a week of Memorial Day

Did northern travelers vacation in Idaho, Alaska, Oregon and seed cases there too?

Is it a coincidence many of these states relaxed around the same time?

5/7

And how did these northern vacationers skip southern states like Virginia, which was still in phase 1?

And what happened to these vacationers? Did they ever get home?

And why didn't they seed cases in the north before they left?

Bottom line is that this is silliness

6/7

Not sure why @CDCDirector is pursing this argument

Either he's looking at bad data or is learning the wrong lessons

Northern vacationers not cause of big national outbreaks

We have to get better at managing the pandemic.

Drawing wrong lessons is harmful to that goal

Fin