October 19, 2020: COVID-19 Surging across the U.S.

 

10/19/20: Fifteen days till the election and we still suck as a nation in how we’re dealing with the virus.

At a Trump rally in Wisconsin, mask-wearing fans are placed behind him.

 

 

 

Nearly every state in the union is seeing rising caseloads. South Dakota, where Governor Kristi Noem has ripped a page from Trump’s knucklehead playbook, has been hit hard. This week she insisted the only reason her state was reporting more cases was that testing capacity had tripled. It had nothing to do with the fact that in the last seven days, 36.4 percent of the tests South Dakota administered had come back positive.

 

For purposes of comparison, Ohio’s positivity rate is 4%.

 

Two weeks ago, Noem’s state hit a record daily high for cases of COVID-19. (Noem is one governor who has eschewed mask mandates.) Last week, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan all hit single-day highs. So did West Virginia and Kansas.

 

Yet, there was President Trump, stumping in Wisconsin and Michigan this weekend, insisting the nation had “turned the corner” on the coronavirus. This will be “good news” to the thousand people in Wisconsin and the thousand in Michigan currently hospitalized with the virus.

New cases: Wisconsin.

 

New cases: Michigan.

You can go digging for positive news regarding COVID-19 if you desire. You won’t find much. Florida has had just under 48,000 hospitalizations. That includes 2,005 sufferers currently under care. Montana’s trend line for hospitalizations is alarming. Based on state records, 1 in 13 people diagnosed with COVID-19 have required hospital stays, including 331 currently. The death rate for Montanans is 1.1% of 22,821 cases, with another 9,000 still in recovery. Kansas is typical of the current situation across the country: rising cases, rising hospitalizations, rising deaths. North Dakota, same.

Montana hospitalizations. 

North Dakota hospitalizations.

 

Ohio had seen a steady decline in hospitalizations during the summer, with a low at one point of 563 persons receiving care. Now, the upswing has begun, with 1,097 hospitalized on October 18. Generally, the picture is grim. Nebraska has seen hospitalizations nearly double since July. New cases per day have quadrupled in New Jersey since August. An average of 20 people are dying in Pennsylvania every day and more than 800 are lying in hospital beds, hoping not to join them.

 

If we are “turning the corner” as the president insists, it isn’t clear what we’re going to see around the corner, save for more deaths, more hospitalizations, and more economic distress. Texas made good progress slowing the spread, from nearly 11,000 cases daily in late August, to only 3,200 by mid-September. Now cases creep upward again, to 4,200 per day. Wyoming was one of the last states to be hit hard, with only six cases on June 4, now rising to more than 200 daily.

 

We can offer only brief glimpses of sunshine piercing the clouds. Daily cases numbers are falling in Georgia, Hawaii, California, and Washington D.C. They are holding steady or rising slightly in a handful of states. Vermont has only two people hospitalized as of October 18.

 

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BUT WAIT! Did we say there were only brief glimpses of sunshine? In terms of disease, yes. In terms of curing ourselves of Donald Trump, polls indicate doctors have high hopes for ballot recovery.

 

The website FiveThirtyEight has Joe Biden with a commanding lead:

 

Aggregate of all polls.

 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (11/9/20): This prediction will prove far too rosy.