We're on a similarly devastating trajectory, minus the political will to do something about it. That's a catastrophic situation.
So when you see an uptick in case counts, you'll see a corresponding uptick in hospitalizations 2ish weeks later, and a corresponding uptick in deaths after another 1-2 weeks.
- Case counts trending up starting week of June 11
- Hospitalizations follow suit the week of June 25 (2wks)
- Deaths follow suit the week of July 9 (2wks)
Transmission has continued rising steadily since then.
Cases have been growing for a month straight, and are approach 4x the mid-June level.
Even if four-fold case increases yield only a two-fold increase in deaths - we'd already be locked into a level of death approaching the worst peaks in April.
At that time hospitalizations & deaths were still at a low level.
So there's not much indication we're close to the peak of this yet.
Widespread masking and avoiding super-spreading opportunities would achieve much. But at this level of transmission, probably not enough.
And this must be nationwide, not just hotspots.
Meanwhile the Sun Belt surge is going to shoot a lot of sparks into other areas.
So if testing capacity is overwhelmed, it elevates the risk greatly for every state.
nytimes.com/2020/07/16/opi…
If we can't muster the political will and public cooperation to apply another round of distancing measures, August and September will be disastrous.
Less outdoor activity, more flu cases to mask potential COVID and to strain the testing infrastructure.
And doing so as a state-by-state patchwork won't suffice. Has to be a harmonized national approach.
Hence my alarm.
The President has his head in the sand and is maintaining that we're in good shape.
DeSantis, Ducey, Kemp, Abbott all reluctant or outright opposed to reimposing major restrictions.
Politicians are less willing, Trump is less interested, and the public is confused, tired, afraid, and receiving little confidence-inspiring guidance from their leaders.
- Order-of-magnitude more testing and tracing capacity
- Enough economic support to incentivize distancing
- Federal intervention to scale test supplies & PPE
- More protection for high-risk groups
- Help for hospitals