Shifting loci of Hot Spots

 The last post concerned the recent spate of Covid Cases in the Upper Midwest.   That spurred some immediate questions about "wasn't there an East Coast thing?" and "how about the South?"

So I thought, let's do several four week intervals, for every one of which we're using the choropleth for Confirmed Cases, where Orange is BAD, and is > 1 person per hundred for that county for that period.

The intervals I selected are:

A. SPRING      March 30--April 27.    This spans the Easter (April 12) by which time President Trump wanted everything RE-OPENED (speech March 24).

B. MEMORIAL DAY     May 18-June 15      This spans the period when many states partially re-opened 

C. MID-SUMMER     July 20-August 17     This covers the outbreaks from July 4 parties , heavily Southern due to governors opening bars and touting 4th of July backyard barbeques

D. EARLY AUTUMN     Sept 13-October 11    This covers the Labor Day celebrations, the late August South Dakota Motorcycle rally, and Trump rallies in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin

SPRING

Confirmed Cases per capita    March 31-April 27, 2020

Note that the Eastern Seaboard, New Orleans (Mardi Gras) and multiple Ski Resorts (Colorado, Utah, Idaho,) and Native American reservations (Arizona, New Mexico, Washington) were uniquely hit.

MEMORIAL DAY

Confirmed Cases per capita     May 18-June 15, 2020

Indian reservations are devastated; states where the governors ignored all the CDC admonistions (South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia) are the worst.  Also note the meat packing houses in Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota and Central California

MID-SUMMER

Confirmed Cases per capita      July 20-August 17, 2020

Texas, Florida, and indeed the entire South, plus an ignorant set of leaders in Central California and right-wing enthusiasts in Idaho and Arizona acted as though the pandemic was either over or was a total hoax.   How'd that work out?

EARLY AUTUMN

Confirmed Cases per capita        September 13-October 11, 2020

And now, the Upper Midwest plus Oklahoma and Virginia reap the benefit of Trump rallies.

Hard to escape the choropleth story, right?

The upper Midwest gets a turn

I continue to be amazed by folk around the country who have been insistent that this COVID stuff is all a big hoax.   The most recent examples being mentioned periodically (and scoffed at too often) on the news is that the upper Midwest is “finally” experiencing its own understanding of the pandemic.

Start with the ill-fated Motorcycle rally in South Dakota, and come forward with the Trump rally in Wisconsin, and here’s the picture for the PER CAPITA Case Load for the 3,142 counties in America for the past four weeks.  Orange is BAD.   It would be unseemly to poke fun, but one can only wish that people would at least listen to sensible news stories and believe this stuff.

Data for 4 weeks -- County by County Confirmed COVID cases for Sept 14-Oct 11, 2020

Orange is BAD

 

Might also be worth pointing out that 1 out of every 4 Californians 80 years old and older, who came down with confirmed Covid have died this year.    One out of four.  25%.

 

For folk between ages 18-34, one out of 1,200 have died.   So the odds are 300 times worse for the geriatric set, of which there are quite a number in our collegial set

Keep wearing those masks