Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Coronavirus dashboard for July 14: A few US States are containing the coronavirus


 - by New Deal democrat

Headlines for the US:
Total infections: 3,364,704
7 day average: 60,997
Total deaths: 135,615
7 day average: 780

We all know that, taken as a whole, the US is failing abysmally in controlling the coronavirus. At least 13 States most notably including California are “re-closing” at least in part.  In the last week, deaths, which had continued to decline despite the renewed exponential rise in cases in many areas, finally started to rise as well:



But, in view of the announcement yesterday that, for the first time in months, on Sunday New York City did not have even a single death from the coronavirus, I thought I would take a look to see if New York, or any other States, have continued to “crush the curve.” There are a few slivers of good news.

For a benchmark, let’s start by taking a look at Canada and the European Union, in terms of cases (dotted lines) and deaths (solid lines) per week:


Canada has 7.35 cases per million per week; the EU 7.91. Canada has .331 deaths per million; the EU .177.

These are markers of true success against the coronavirus. Do any US States even come close? Only 4: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Hawaii.

Here are the 4 above States compared with Canada (blue) in terms of cases:


And here is the same comparison in terms of deaths:


Over the past 7 days, the numbers of cases and deaths per million respectively are:
ME 14 / .531
NH 16 / .946
VT 11 / 0
HI 22 / .303

Note that Hawaii’s case counts have recently increased. I decided to include them because, as islands, I suspect the State can turn it around quickly.

By comparison, here is how NY compares with Canada in terms of cases per million:


And deaths per million:


NYS still has around 4x the number of both new infections and deaths compared with Canada.

Aside from NY, only 5 other States are swimming against the tide of sharply rising new infections: NJ, CT, RI, MA, and SD. Here is the long term view:


And here is the same data just over the past 4 weeks:


Note RI apparently had a data dump yesterday, accounting for the sharp one day increase.

Bottom line: only the Northeast above the Mason-Dixon Line, and excluding PA, is continuing to have any success containing or crushing the coronavirus. The metro NYC and Boston areas still have work to do to bring their numbers down to that of neighboring Canada.

The rest of the US is on fire.