Memorial Day Social Distancing

Based upon images I’m seeing in the news, it doesn’t look like the average American is social distancing. Instead, it looks like they are clustering around pools and beaches, having fun and, to my eyes, it looks like mostly the youngsters having a party. So they are going to bring back the virus to their houses or towns and “kill” some of the elderly or the health-compromised.

Maybe the virus won’t spread. We might know in a couple of weeks. Experts say we should start to see an uptick in June – but I’m thinking more likely July only because some of the May upticks in the rural areas are being traced back to March big events.

June or July is when we should start to see an uptick.

I did some further graphing, based upon an idea I read elsewhere. When I do graphs of the US trends, I generally see the daily case infections trending down (see left image below), but a doctor said that if you take out New York, you will see the case infections rising, meaning as New York gets better, the rest of the US is seeing rising infections. However, when I did the graphing (see middle image), the daily infection just flattened out. I then tried taking out the entire Northeast (rightmost image) which led to a graph of rising infection rate, so the Midwest, the south and the western region are experiencing rising rates.

The source of all of these regional data came from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic_data/United_States_medical_cases and the table is “Non-repatriated covid-19 cases in the US by state”

After seeing these results, I had another idea and that is to do graphs by region simply because I already had that kind of data. The image on the left shows the infection rate for each regions. The northeast – dominated by New York – rose in March and April and started falling in May. Right about now, it looks like the Northeast is on par with the Midwest and South. Midwest looks like it is slightly rising in cases while the South appears to be trending in a flat fashion. But experts have been sounding their concerns about the Midwest and South.

On the righthand side, there are four regional graphs showing the states’ infection rates. The Midwest in the upper left hand corner of the image is dominated by Illinois. The South appears to be dominated by Virginia but if I look closely, that is probably just today. I think the main worrisome state – and the experts have been talking a lot about this state – is Texas. It has been having a high level of daily infection rates in May. In April, it was Louisiana – probably the result of Mardi Gras – but the state seems to have it under control. Texas stands out in the South. And then finally, the California is the West’s troublesome state, despite being the first state to order stay at home. I wonder if California has enough stubborn Republicans that are not complying with the social distancing and the masks? (Remember, Devin Nunes comes from California).

These graphs are telling an interesting story, if it wasn’t so terrible.

The last graph I did was the graph of the top 10 countries in the world by cumulative totals – not daily infection rates – and Brazil popped up to second place just over the weekend. You can see the dramatic rise in cumulative infections for both Brazil and Russia.

Wow! Brazil just really pops.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–20_coronavirus_pandemic. Table: vte covid-19 pandemic by country and territory