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\n\u201cThis is totally predictable\u201d<\/p>\nMany states opened up in early May, hoping the economy would recover while a winning battle against Covid-19 continued apace.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it\u2019s now clear that in the areas where the virus has come roaring back, few gains against it were made in the last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe managed to disrupt our economy [and] skyrocket unemployment, and we didn\u2019t control the damn virus,\u201d said Jeff Shaman, an infectious disease modeler at Columbia University.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is totally predictable, and there have been many warnings,\u201d Sarah Cobey, an infectious disease modeler at the University of Chicago, said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing undeniable signals that prevalence is truly increasing in many states.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simply put, reopenings have led to more infections because more people are coming into contact with each other while there\u2019s still a lot of virus around. Mask use is inconsistent, and even when they\u2019re worn properly, masks are not 100 percent effective at preventing transmission.<\/p>\n
In Arizona, nursing and long-term care facilities are still hotbeds of transmission. \u201cIn Arizona, one in three nursing homes has had a case of Covid-19,\u201d Vox\u2019s Umair Irfan previously reported.<\/p>\n
Most concerning, Cobey said, is the increased hospitalization rates in these states \u2014 a reminder that the virus can be very severe and deadly for some, and that deaths could also start climbing soon. \u201cIt\u2019s a lagging signal, so what it\u2019s really telling us is how transmission rates were changing closer to two weeks ago,\u201d Cobey added. \u201cThis implies that unless behavior \u2014 the primary driver of transmission \u2014 has changed in the meantime, the situation will continue to worsen for another few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too soon to know what impact the mass protests against police brutality will have on the pandemic. (Many protesters know the risks and have thoughtful reasons for participating anyway.) The spikes we\u2019re seeing now result from actions and decisions that likely predate them. <\/p>\n
How bad might things get in Arizona and other states? We don\u2019t know yet. It might not be a disaster. These states could avoid the worst-case scenario of hospitals being overwhelmed and keep the epidemic curve from spiking to uncontrolled levels. Still, more cases likely means more deaths \u2014 some of which could have potentially been avoided.<\/p>\n
Overall, though, the trends are not moving in a good direction, and we have yet to see the full Covid-19 consequences of reopening.<\/p>\n
Not every place that\u2019s reopening is seeing spikes. Scientists aren\u2019t sure why.<\/p>\n
Ending or loosening lockdowns hasn\u2019t led to Covid-19 spikes everywhere.<\/p>\n
Georgia was one of the first states to reopen businesses, like barber shops, on April 30. Since then, its Covid-19 cases have more or less remained flat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t Georgia go through the roof? And the answer is, \u2018We don\u2019t know,\u2019\u201d Shaman said. The pandemic is \u201ca real patchwork\u201d in America, he added.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n
Similarly, Smith said she is \u201ca bit surprised that Ohio is doing as well as we are since reopening.\u201d Maskless armed protesters showed up at the Ohio Statehouse for three weeks to demand that the governor allow businesses to reopen. \u201cWe don\u2019t have all the data right now to determine why some [areas] have increased and others have not,\u201d she said. It could depend more on how individuals behave \u2014 for instance, whether they\u2019re wearing masks \u2014 than on any broad policy the state may enact.<\/p>\n
Scientists are still unraveling what makes the difference between a sprawling outbreak in one city and a more manageable one in another. Some factors are policy, demographics, structural inequality and racism, and individual behavior. And some of it is just luck. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to remember: Though scientists can\u2019t precisely predict which areas will be hit hardest by Covid-19, they do understand the conditions under which the virus thrives. And so they can predict, broadly, when social distancing isn\u2019t replaced with another safeguard, cases will increase. <\/p>\n
The main ingredient that leads to increased cases is more people being in close contact with one another out in public. \u201cI believe the increases we\u2019re seeing in places like Arizona are likely the results of easing social-distancing restrictions too soon,\u201d Eleanor Murray, a Boston University epidemiologist, said. <\/p>\n
These new spikes in cases appear to be occurring in places that have largely avoided the worst coronavirus outbreaks so far. But it\u2019s important to remember that even hard-hit places like New York could still see new waves of infections. There are still so, so many people out there who are not immune to the virus.<\/p>\n
Is this a \u201csecond wave\u201d?<\/p>\n
In the US, overall cases have been dropping slowly. But a lot of that is due to the initial huge crisis in New York subsiding, obscuring the emergence of new hot spots.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s happening now in Arizona and elsewhere is the continuation of the first wave, or the first wave in those areas.<\/p>\n
But \u201cwaves\u201d might be the wrong metaphor to describe what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
Instead, I imagine a bunch of nuclear reactors spread out across the country. Control rods have been taken out in many of these reactors without being replaced by new controls, and the reaction grows. This disaster is maybe more like Chernobyl and less like a tsunami. It\u2019s our actions \u2014 both collective and individual \u2014 that determine the results.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, there\u2019s no quick, snappy metaphor that really gets at the complexity of how the virus spreads. But at the same time, the story is simple: When you don\u2019t do enough to stop people with no immunity from getting infected, transmissions occur.<\/p>\n
Experts never said that eternal lockdowns were the only choice we had to combat the pandemic. They argued that once areas got the initial case spikes under control through widespread social distancing (with new cases decreasing over at least a two-week span), a new phase of control should begin with widespread testing and contact tracing. The initial lockdown period avoided the worst possible scenario, but the US didn\u2019t use that time to prepare for managing the pandemic in the future. And now we\u2019ve wasted the weeks that have passed since reopening.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs prevalence rises, the demands on contact tracing increase too, because there are more cases to track,\u201d Cobey said. \u201cAt some point it becomes more practical for governments to institute blanket interventions to reduce prevalence.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is, we may have no choice but to enter lockdowns again. The scary thought: What if states or businesses aren\u2019t willing to do it? How many people will die? How many hospital systems will be overwhelmed?<\/p>\n
Too many communities and states \u201care acting like we\u2019re done with it,\u201d Shaman said of the pandemic. \u201cAnd we\u2019re nowhere near done with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One month ago, I asked epidemiologist Tara Smith if she was worried about states loosening their stay-at-home orders, despite most not meeting the government\u2019s criteria for doing so. \u201cI am really fearful that by June 1 or June 15, after we\u2019ve seen a couple weeks to a month of [state reopenings], that our cases are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}