Parallax View - part the fourteenth

Another week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 - 440
100 to 999 - 1,160

Grand total of counties reads at 3,057. Oh joy. Not much territory left to invade; most of it is in the empty spaces in Utah and Montana. Texas, on the other hand, marches due North. The Great Folding Line from Texas to Canada (whether into Saskatchewan or Manitoba; the mnemonic to remember the western provinces is BASM, Borland's alternative Assembler for Intel chips and DOS, obvious to those with a history of programming rejection) is filling in with all due haste. The expansion of counties is back on track. And, as is obvious, the largest groups count continues to rise. All of the other groups, save the bottom, are growing in count. The trek up the mountain of contagion continues unimpeded. While Europe, made up of many countries and more humans than the USofA, managed to co-ordinate a continent wide plan of attack that has reduced Covid-19 to embers. Really. Even Boris learned the error of his ways.

Yeah, just a few embers.
"The White House press secretary responded by characterizing the surge in cases as 'embers in the country' and blamed the increase in coronavirus testing on the uptick." An interesting account of causation.

And, if you've not been taking in any News, and I sympathize completely, Mississippi government is shut down with at least 36 persons in the capitol being sick. Not a big number, in the grand scope of things, but amounts to 1 in 6 legislators. That hurts. Some times stereotypes are based in truth. Redneck rubes without an ounce of brains among them all. In God's Country, they ain't no Covid-19 among the God Fearing White People. I guess this means that God IS punishing them for their sins. Kind of like AIDS and Plague and locusts and such.

I suppose that more testing is also the cause of more hospitalizations. Not at all that more people are getting more sick. Hell, if we stopped cancer screening, we'd win The War on Cancer (1971), wouldn't we?

The pincer movement continues; red/orange marches NNW from the Deep South and ENE from SoCal/Arizona.

Well, may be we can celebrate the Covid-19 equivalent of the Transcontinental Railroad's Golden Spike. That was in Utah, 1869. Didn't happen in Middle America, just because building the railroad through the Rockies was a tad more difficult than screaming across the flatlands on the West side of the Appalachians. This bit of the weekly missive is happening a day early, on Sunday with Topo says, Saturday data. A bit more exploration led to the conclusion that one needn't wait. Even so, we have connection (with the next-but-lowest group) in mid-Kansas. Yahoo!! You can watch the march from The Coasts by clicking off 'All Affected Counties', then click on groups in order from the largest. You'll see the pincer movement in stark detail. If you were so motivated, you could trek across country taking a mid-South route, in a direct line, needing only the top 3 groups. Let that sink in. Among other factors, this trip encompasses a boatload of low density rural counties. In due time, I suspect, we'll have connection with the larger groups. Given the magnitude of new infections throughout the South and West and Southwest, I suspect we'll have connection with at least one more group by the next episode in this serial drama.

What the exercise teaches, is just what Cuomo (and the epidemiologists) said all these months ago (24 March 2020):

first
This started in New York first. We have global travelers, more density, and you will see this in cities across country. ... We are just a test case and that's how the nation should look at it.

and
New York is the canary in the coal mine, New York is happening first, what is happening to New York will happen to California and Illinois, it is just a matter of time

His warning to God's Country got more strident as weeks rolled on. This is just the earliest quote I could find. I don't guarantee it's the first. The Red South just assumed that they wouldn't have a problem because their towns weren't cities and their cities weren't as densely populated, with lots of public transportation, in particular. How's that working out for ya, Orange County knuckledraggers?

As to the new attack on Fauci's "mistakes", the one ex-President AuH₂O 2020 keeps harping on is the mask quote. A few points to note:
1 - at the time he was asked, all masks were in very short supply, and he said that masks should go to first responders and health workers over others.
2 - whatya wanna bet that ex-President AuH₂O 2020, or a minion, told Fauci to downplay masks?
3 - at the time he was asked, the medical community wasn't yet sure that presymps and asymps were driving contagion; Fauci didn't make up the recommendation off the cuff.
4 - ex-President AuH₂O 2020 followed that March 'advice' until this weekend; why is he complaining? Fauci said what ex-President AuH₂O 2020 wanted to hear, whether pressured to or not.