March 22 US Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

As I suspected, we passed 35,000 known infections in the US on Sunday, putting us at almost exactly the number of cases Italy had 4 days prior.

Here's a look at our chart showing the exponential growth. As noted before, each column grouping represents twice the level of infection (that is, number of infections per 100,000) as does the column to the right.



On Sunday we had to add a new column, the 64-128 cases per 100,000 range, and I won't be surprised if New York's caseload pushes into a new column again tomorrow.


Here's the chart of infection rates by state:


To me, the main takeaway here is California, which despite very public descriptions as being "epicenter #3" is 26th among these jurisdictions in the severity of their outbreak. Even in terms of just number of cases (which should not be the yardstick by which we measure the severity of the outbreak anywhere), California has been surpassed by New Jersey, a state with less than 1/4th the population of California.

Zooming in on the county level, we see this:

The first note is that I've had to correct the New York numbers. I had assumed my source was separating New York County (Manhattan) from the other counties of New York City, but I realized today that they've been lumping all 5 boroughs (which are also counties) together. New York City is still suffering from a high caseload, but it's not quite as scary as if it were just Manhattan, and in fact is lower than the closest suburban NYC counties except for Bergen County, NJ.

I've added more counties, mostly Texas counties on the lower Gulf Coast. Why? Let's paraphrase the drunken Mardi Gras revelers who made New Orleans the real "epicenter #3" and shout out, "Show us your tests!" The Texas counties I've added, Aransas, Cameron, Nueces, and San Patricio, all cover part of North and South Padre Island, a major Spring Break college student destination. What about Florida? Well, I think I've added most of those major spring break beach destinations in previous days, but if I've missed any please let me know--I'm certainly no expert on which Florida beaches spring breakers flock to.

Currently there are few, if any, cases in these Texas counties. I suspect Texas is even further behind the already woeful lack of testing in the rest of the US, and so these numbers may be artificially low. I also have no idea what levels of "social distancing" have been practiced in these Spring Break hotspots, so it will be interesting to see what the spread will look like. Maybe they will fare better than the Colorado ski resorts and New Orleans.

My list of the real epicenters of COVID-19 in the US, in order of severity:

1. New York City - The city alone, with 2.5% of the US population, accounts for 30% of the total number of cases in the US. That is just astonishing. And the infection is not isolated to New York City; it's actually worse in the suburbs. Westchester County, just north of the city, Rockland, across the Hudson from Westchester, and Nassau, just east of Queens and Brooklyn, all have more than 100 cases per 100,000, with Westchester in particular certain to pass 200 cases per 100K on Monday. New Jersey has not done a good job of geographically identifying cases over the weekend, so Bergen County is likely higher than it shows up now as well, though it won't be over 100.
2. Ski resort towns - I'm lumping all these together despite the fact that they may me hundreds of miles from each other as they are suffering high rates for the same reason and the counties are very similar in size (and presumably healthcare infrastructure) to each other. Most of these towns have very high rates, although a couple (Breckinridge and Telluride), while high, are lower than the others. I have to wonder if that is real, or they just haven't tested enough there. Denver, while not a ski town and not at crisis levels of infection, is relatively high as well, and one has to wonder if that has to do with it being a transportation hub for people flying in and out of the area to get to those ski resorts.
3. New Orleans - Mardi Gras was a month ago, and New Orleans is paying the price of bad policy. We shut down flights from China at the end of January, almost a month before Mardi Gras. Many health experts disagreed with this policy, but what they did agree on was that this policy would not be effective if the time gained from the travel bans was not utilized; travel bans were supposed to be the beginning of measures to fight the pandemic, not the end. So why don't we hear about New Orleans, in government discussions, or in national media? Could it be because our dear leader doesn't understand "per capita"? Could it be because Louisiana is a red state? Could it be because New Orleans is a "chocolate city"?
4. Seattle - This may be a success story. As recently as March 18th, Washington had an infection rate almost identical to the state of New York, and the two counties in Washington that are the center of the epidemic there had higher rates than every part of New York other than Westchester County. Now while the infection rate has grown in Washington, it has grown much slower than in New York and other areas.
5. Dougherty County, GA
6. Bartow County, GA. I really can't figure out these two counties, which are geographically and demographically disperse enough that I don't see a reason to lump them together other than that why their rates are so high is an absolute mystery to me.
7. Detroit - New Orleans without the Mardi Gras tourism? I don't know why Detroit would be so bad. Was there a major auto show or something similar to drive a lot of travel there? But like New Orleans, it is a very black city with very white suburbs. Both the city and the suburbs have high levels of infection, and there is no national coverage of it.
8. Milwaukee.
9. Nashville.
10. Denver.

Note that no location in California even appears on this list, though Silicon Valley would be roughly tied with Boston and Chicago for the next spots after Denver. So why is California so heavily represented? Well, it does have a lot of cases with 1800 (though as I mentioned earlier New Jersey now has 100 more cases than California). When you compare that with the nation as a whole, California has just over 5% of the cases and yet almost 12% of the population. A few days ago I saw a BBC broadcast in which they spoke to a Congressman from the Palm Springs area who spoke of the grave situation there. This news story was the reason I added Riverside County to the list of counties I'm tracking. And yet the infection rate there is only 1.693 cases per 100,000. That is 59th out of 65 counties I'm tracking. I don't mean to minimize the suffering anywhere, or the concern that California officials feel, but that doesn't excuse our national media and federal government for focusing on California at the expense of places much worse off.

Meanwhile, here in Texas our (known) infection rates are relatively low. But it sure feels like an enormous shoe has yet to drop. Show us your tests.