The story thus far, abridged. Abridged, because you know much of the story thus far.
In early March of 2020, at a time when few tests were available and all positive tests had to be confirmed through the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, the SARS-CoV-2 seeded itself throughout the United States. (From hereon, I'm going to call the virus by its commonly used name, coronavirus.)
At first, individual cases were reported by states in their Department of Health Twitter accounts. The alarm was downplayed. Texas pointed out that, when it had its first case, there was only one case statewide and there was no great danger (the tweets are at the end of this post). Over the course of the month of March, each state put together its own website with its own style of reporting or not reporting essential information (with Texas being among the last to put together a dedicated web-page). West Virginia was the last to report a case: March 17th.
Since March, coronavirus has been responsible for over 10% of all deaths in the United States. (Derived from Table I, CDC)
From mid- to late-March each state initiated its own flavor of lockdown. Deriving these numbers from state reports, I found the cases went from an median weekly rate of 31.8* per million population per state for the week ending March 21st, to an early peak of 459.3 for the week ending May 2nd. The infections and mortality in the initial hotspots greatly declined. For the week ending May 9th, (when testing was much more available) Montana registered 3 new cases statewide. (Spoiler alert: for the week ending October 10th they would have 1808 new cases.)
*The March numbers were mostly likely underestimated due to limited testing.
The Trump administration and many state governments were chomping to reopen businesses. There was a desperation to return to normal. The president suggested reopening for Easter (April 11). This date came and passed. April into May and the pressure to reopen built.
Number geeks put together a series of statistical benchmarks for reopening. Yay, thought the geeks. We can help fight this virus. Among these was a guideline that the local area should have a 5% or lower positivity rate.
State governments looked at their numbers and freaked out. I have to tell this urban county they can reopen and not this rural one? Won't people just cross the county borders to go shopping? What if the number is 6%? Or 10%. Iowa's governor later put out a guideline that schools can request closing if the local numbers were over 20%.
And so many states ignored the stop signals. With positivity rates of over 10%, Florida allowed the reopening of Disneyworld. The numbers rose. These are the median number of cases per week per million for the fifty states and the District of Columbia starting the week ending May 30th. The median number were derived by ranking the states each week and noting the number of the state in the middle spot: twenty-five states with more cases, twenty-five with fewer. I also included the rate of cases for the state that had the peak number.
For the week ending June 6th, Maryland led the nation with 904.3 new cases per million population. In the past two weeks this number was well below the median. Having crunched a lot of these numbers, 1000 new cases per week per million was my line for dividing out those states with out-of-control infection rates. Now it is the norm.
In the first days, a select number of states had high infection rates, while others were nearly virus-free. During July, as more and more states "reopened," the infections shifted to high-population states, most especially Florida and Texas. California had a moderately high rate and with its population added to the total. This gave a peak in total cases in new cases per week climbed over 500,000.
As the most populous states lowered their rates, the new cases per week fell to near 240,000. This week it passed 300,000.
The current rise in the median number of cases indicates that most states are experiencing high rates. This is especially true of a number of low-populated state. Before October, Florida set the record high in new cases per week with 3867.2 per million. This past week, North Dakota shattered that record, nearing 5000. (South Dakota also broke Florida's record.)
I have written about the Sturgis, South Dakota motorcycle rally being a super-spreader event. This past week, South Dakota and those states sharing a border ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 9th, 13th and 17th in most new cases per million people.
Here is a graphic for all fifty states and the District of Columbia for new cases per million for the week ending October 10th. Although Vermont had the fewest new cases, they have had a blip or possibly significant increase of four-fold over the past two weeks. Other states that have been doing well, such as New York, have also had a disturbing jump.
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