Across the United States, 38,115 new infections were reported by state health departments on Wednesday — surpassing the previous single-day record of 34,203 set on April 25. Texas, Florida and California led the way, with all three states reporting more than 5,000 new cases apiece.
Three states — California, Florida and Oklahoma — reported record highs in new single-day coronavirus cases, while hospitalizations hit a new peak in Arizona, where intensive care units have quickly filled.
(cont. Washington Post)
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Not much to add here, but I want to drop two graphs, because words are cute, but everybody can tell UP from DOWN on a picture.
I showed this graph to a Pandemic Denier (imagine believing that concern over a whole virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people is just the result of shock journalism and fake news!) and his immediate response was “The US has way more people than any of those countries…”
I don’t have the bandwidth to explain how “cases per million” is not the actual number of cases, but the cases in relation to population because I don’t get paid to teach anybody 6th grade math. So I just hit him with this graph.
The population of the European Union is 446 million.
The population of the United States is 328 million.
Of course the next argument from all of them is “but the US is doing WAY more tests than every one else.”
Fine. Let’s just say we are leading the world in coronavirus testing because I’m tired. There’s a pandemic going on and we’re having a week of 90 degree weather in NYC. I’m too irritable to go back and forth with anyone.
Are we doing seven times as much testing as the European Union? If you’re a person truly believes the US is really at the forefront of testing (when there are people around the country who only have one testing site that’s only open to essential workers and only available if you have insurance), do you really think we’re doing seven times as much testing, because we definitely have seven times as many new infections daily.
And you know what? Fine. Believe that too. I accidentally bought the wrong kind of cheese today for my chicken parm and I couldn’t find the leave in conditioner I like for my twistout so, like I said, I’m too irritable to go back and forth with anyone.
The number of tests we’re doing relative to anyone else wouldn’t account for an upward swing here and a steady pace elsewhere.
Let’s say the EU does 10 tests today with 1 positive result. Tomorrow, the EU does 10 tests again, with 1 positive result. That’s flat. The curve is flat. They don’t have more infections one day than the day before.
Let’s say the US does 70 tests today (seven times as many as the EU, because these people believe we’re at the forefront of testing…) with 7 positive results. Tomorrow, the US does 70 tests again, but with 9 positive results. That’s an upward curve because we have more infections one day than the day before.
It’s as simple as that. Up is up. Down is down. Some numbers are bigger than other numbers. The US trajectory is skyrocketing and it’s even more embarrassing when you compare it to the European Union. When we decided to flatten the curve, someone should have specified horizontally or vertically, because we’re going straight up at this point.
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