Your Cheatin Heart - part the sixth

June 15, 2021 


                           New York Times 

                        by A. Corres Pondent 


     RED STATES WITH SPARSE VACCINATIONS EXPLODE WITH COVID 

To the surprise of No One, the Red States, which have been lax in getting their populations vaccinated, are experiencing a resurgence in Covid. The curve started back up on May 14, the day after the CDC and President Biden announced that the fully vaccinated are free to go about their lives without a mask in all venues, not just outdoors.

To the surprise of No One, all those Red State Yahoos immediately dis-masked, even though the majority eligible for vaccines have refused to be vaccinated. If the rest of the country is fortunate, the Yahoos will infect themselves to death.

[update 14 May]
Here's the vaccination record for the states. The bottom of the barrel

At the other end, the five states with the lowest percentage of people with one dose are Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho.

So, one dose isn't the best measure, but still. Here's the benchmark as of 14 May behind the June 15 lede from the NYT.

Since the point is daily trend, updated to use reported daily cases. Per 100K is only reported, in this source, as 7-day.

             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    201     8 

Louisiana      421    10 
 
Alabama        285     6  cases data on the 14th is way whacky, so stick with 7-day average
 
Wyoming         83    12 
 
Idaho          167     9 

We'll stop by the data every now and again to see whether the Oracle turns out to be correct. One actually hopes not, since Covid doesn't respect state lines.

[update 21 May]

             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    105     5 

Louisiana      340     9 
 
Alabama        443     6 
 
Wyoming         70    14 
 
Idaho          167     9 

[updated 28 May]

             cases    per 100K
Mississippi    131     5 

Louisiana      354     9 
 
Alabama        228     5 
 
Wyoming         96    12 
 
Idaho          135     8 

Remember when Canada closed its borders with the the Covid-dirty USofA?

Government leaders in both countries first announced the border closure more than one year ago on March 21, 2020, and have extended the order on a near-monthly basis since.

When Canada was a paragon of good sense and effective policy? Canada has been recently mentioned here because the facts on the ground, as they say, have changed. While no where near Brazil or India in absolute numbers (the population is a small fraction of either of those countries), Canada is experiencing yet another surge; some say third while others this is the fourth.

Today's report focuses on Manitoba. Recall that Canada's governmental structure is not just a Little USofA; it is actually more of a Confederate State's Rights nation. Provincial government has more authority then US states. For instance

The situation is a remarkable reversal. Manitoba once stood out as an example of the effectiveness of tight restrictions, like closing its borders to the rest of Canada, to curb the spread of the virus.

Now:

Over the past two weeks, the province has reported a daily average of 35 new cases per 100,000 people, far exceeding Canada as a whole, which is averaging about 10. Manitoba has more than twice as many new cases per day than the next-highest state or province.

Across the globe, the truth is manifest: containment of a pathogen as Covid-19 means you cannot 'open up' the economy/society as soon as the case count drops a bit. In fact, just opening at some arbitrary lower case count, without instituting aggressive testing and contact tracing means that Dat Ole Exponential Growth will come aroarin back. Why would it not? Lack of those two effective measures is how we got to last January in the first place (thanks to ex-President AuH₂O 2020). Combine opening at some lower case count without testing and contact tracing and with low a vaccination rate guarantees another surge. Canada is a poster child for how not to do it. Most provinces are in about the same boat as Manitoba. In order to nip such a pathogen in the bud, so to say, the healthcare system has to know, lickety split, who's newly infected, who they got it from, and who they may have infected. It was last year that most of the USofA gave up on testing and tracing because Covid had been allowed to explode past the testing and tracing capacity.

One of my few teeVee addictions is "Air Disasters", which The Wife deplores since I've always had an antipathy to flying (I don't trust engineers as a group). Yet knowing this about self, I'm still fascinated by the show, for the simple reason that it's a showcase for how other engineers tease out the failure of an airplane flight. Sometimes it's just that the crew screwed up. Other times, more interestingly and importantly, the investigators discover some systemic issue, sometimes with the aircraft model, other times with the ATC system, and sometimes with the regulators. Always, at least in the show, the system, broadly, learns from the disaster, and institutes changes to prevent a recurrence. On the whole, globally, politicians have refused to learn anything about quashing Covid.

We've got another couple of weeks to see whether the vaccine resistent states have their own, localized, surges. So far the numbers are mixed. Stay tuned.