The point on states constitutionally not being able to disallow intrastate travel is a good one. That being said no state outside of NY in the early days has had anything resembling a real lockdown.
If California could close their borders they would still be a complete disaster with their current restriction level. I also don’t see any state governors closing their borders even if they could. Are any outside of NY even enforcing quarantines? We have friends going to Hawaii next week. They do not have to quarantine on arrival. If state’s won’t even do that what makes you think they would actually shut travel down.
I’m just saying we are still here almost a year later coming up with excuses why a S. Korea or Australia is doing so much better. It’s simple. They locked the fuck down until they could manage test/trace. They didn’t let tens of thousands of international air travelers stream in every day with no quarantine or covid test. We have known all that for months and months. Having land borders has nothing to do with it and is being used by the right to imply dirty covid infested illegals are causing the US/Europe to do poorly.
The US and much of Europe is doing poorly because we are selfish entitled pricks with laughably poor government. Full stop.
They locked down before the virus arrived - OZ in the summer (MBN), SK because the population had heard of / experienced a respitory virus coming out of China a few years earlier - like, they didn’t need informing twice. Test and Trace works if you lockdown before it arrives.
Apples and oranges. 44 governments in Europe, 742 million population, a few different approaches, all of which saw low (at least a decrease) in cases after NY+ style lockdowns from March to June (3 months, no takeout, vast majority having home delivery of groceries for 5+ years, before pandemic). The US had never really ‘gotten’ it below the early case numbers (surges)
UK’s not got it right - half right, maybe - new variant though. The other 43 might be doing better than US…
The thrust of my point is that about 180 countries are doing badly. You wouldn’t think it from this thread, but the 5 or 6 that are doing well are the exceptions, not the US.
This is a crazy way of looking at things. You said earlier:
Your 434 per capita rate is more than twice the rate that the CDC defines as highest risk of transmission in its school reopening criteria. That rate would translate to a daily average case rate of 102k for the entire US, which is a level we only reached in early November. It is absolutely a super-high rate of transmission, even if you can find other nearby areas with higher rates.
Not any more severe, so long as your country has unlimited hospital capacity
A study by Imperial College of the new variant of the coronavirus apreading across the UK has found that it boosts the R number - the measure of how quickly the epidemic spreads - by between 0.4 and 0.7.
That means every 10 people infected are likely to infect between four and seven extra people if they have the new variant, compared to previous strains of the virus.
“That doesn’t sound like much but the difference is quite extreme," Imperial College’s Prof Axel Gandy told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Under the November lockdown conditions, the reproduction rate was in the region of 0.9 and with the old variant that would mean that over two to three weeks, the cases would decrease by about 30% - whereas in the new variant they would triple."
SAME severity i.e “no evidence yet that it is more deadly”
The geonome was only sequenced 20 days ago so hard to tell it’s direct impact on death rate given that covid usually takes a good 3 to 4 weeks to death
That was a different new strain. There’s been multiple strains bouncing around, far too soon to say much of anything conclusive about any of them regarding lethality.
When / if the new variant takes hold in the US, 200k daily cases will hit 300k, 3.5k deaths a day should easily hit 5k - but severity (CFR) is the same
I don’t know that you as dictator (like real human dictator and not just a God that gets exactly what they want) of the US or France or the UK could make that happen. Maybe you could. Maybe not.
I do know it’s not as simple as “Lol America” or it’s Trump that did it.
Yeah, I’m not sure they can. Kids volunteer by the boatload to fight in foreign war and they demonize those who won’t. Civil unrest can spread disease too.
Eta: when 95% of the countries in the world are handling it atrociously, one might be a little cautious about thinking it’s really easy to handle it well.
