Yeah from what I am reading, some of these southern states are about to experience two months of absolute hell. We looked on in horror as Italy and then London struggled pretty badly, but it seems places like Florida and Texas are going to have it far worse. Not good. :|

Talk to me when Florida reaches deaths/million or antibody levels of NY (which it may).

Neither are perfect variables to compare, but both these variables are much much much more accurate comparison than cases/day, as there is so much variability in testing across space and time, especially time.

Hmmmm, let's take a look at that list, shall we?

1. San Marino
2. Belgium
3. Andorra
4. UK

Yup, being a tiny country or a small island is definitely the key to handling this disease.

And yet the 2 most isolated states which have autonomously been able to control their borders have had the best results.

Disagree.

There's no evidence that current rises in California are due to interstate travel. We can't stop the cases that are already here. Whatever political willingness existed at one point to take the necessary steps to squash it out have since disappeared. Whatever Newsom could do given the power/resources, he still needs the people on his side to do it, and however liberal you think CA is, 31% of this state voted for Trump. If Newsom took more serious steps, Orange County would riot; they've made their stance on allowing COVID to spread quite clear.

Texas and Florida, where those same conditions are much worse than in California, are learning that the hard way right now. And what these states all have in common, that prevents them from taking the necessary steps to look more like Germany or South Korea, is the not the size of our federal government but rather the uniquely American sense of individual entitlement.

None of those countries had any border control at the time they needed it. If you are a small country with porous borders with lots of infected coming in from other places, I agree you will fare just as bad as the large, continental countries with porous borders.

I thought Florida did "close" its borders, in that they had checkpoints, required quarantine etc?

so your entire argument is extreme geographic isolation is successful at combating pandemics? congrats on the incoming nobel prize.

LOL. Los Angeles County is over half the California cases, and like everywhere else the black and Hispanic communities (which don't vote for Trump) were hit harder than the white ones. This isn't a partisan story.

At least argue the black and Hispanic communities in CA are being hard hit because of systemic racism. That is at least an argument the data aligns with. Arguing COVID spread in CA is due to Trump supporters just doesn't work at all.

Florida got its pandemic from people bringing it from the North East (NY/NJ mainly). That isn't to say the Florida governor wasn't complicit in allowing this to happen, he definitely was. But let's get the story right at least.

Cuomo in NY could have clamped down earlier. But he had no way of knowing. Because the Federal Government screwed up testing production so badly. It would have been a bold move in the beginning of March to shut down the economy. And/or to close all of the airports. But he would have been the first. And he had no national resources to guide him on this decision.

But here is what he didn't do:
- Fire the single WHO rep the US had in the Wuhan province in July 2019
- Fire the pandemic response team that Obama had set up in early 2019
- disregard all results from the 2018 pandemic simulation that his pandemic response team had run

It makes no sense for each state to be trying to determine the best way to handle this locally. They need guidance, help, resources, and expertise at a national level.

I live in NY and I was basically going to play poker at Foxwoods in mid March in a tournament series. I had no idea the pandemic had already spread so far. I chose not to go in part because our President at one of his news conferences said "Anyone who wants a test can get a test". Not believing a word he said I realized that there was no way for any of us playing to know if we had Covid. And there would be little chance I could get tested coming back. And testing capacity was so bad that there was no way our state (or anyone in the US) could conduct contact tracing to alert me that I had been exposed. And even if they could, I wouldn't be able to get tested anyway.

And what is worse there are no guidelines mandated by the federal government that can help states that are tourist intensive deal with Covid in a way that could help other states (not to mention other countries) deal with their returning citizens.

So we are left with Vegas starting up their casinos with a mayor who doesn't seem to know what a pandemic is, making sure that it is up to Casinos to determine safety guidelines for their patrons. And we end up seeing patrons with no masks on acting like Covid "is being handled". This is what happens when we let Localities determine what to do during a pandemic.

Your argument that it's not a partisan story is based on the identity of those getting infected? What? Those are two completely separate things, what are you talking about???

Do you deny that conservative Californians are a significant impediment to instituting stricter lockdown methods in this state to stop the spread of the virus (or even getting more people to wear masks)?

Is this the whole folk fleeing from NY to their summer homes in Florida thing?

Bold theory. So, I guess let's consider your proposal and make it more extreme: not one authority, not 50, not 200, but let's go with all the way to 128 million locked down territories, and you get the solution that the epidemiologists have been clamoring for all along.

No, it's mainly just, "No, the US isn't uniquely terrible because of Trump, it's because of the liberals." Same as every kelhus post ever.

North Easterners travel to Florida a lot, for a lot of different reasons, especially when the weather is bad in the north East.

Spring Break is a massive annual, cultural event that happens in March-April where thousands of mostly young adults travel to Florida to party.

my mother lives in one of the snowbird communities in florida (not the villages), and in a normal year people travel to florida IN THE WINTER. there is a mass exodus from florida BACK TO THE NORTHEAST/Canada in march/april. her 1000+ home development is a ghost town from about may until october. no one that has anywhere else to be wants to be in florida during the summer.

so the homeowner trend is largely the opposite of what kelhus is spinning.

obviously there are vacationers and tourists, and im sure some vacationers refused to cancel their vacations even amidst the pandemic, but the idea that Florida's entire outbreak was started by New Yorkers is pretty silly.

That is you falling for fake media narratives. While the media was focused on a couple thousand knucklehead demonstrators in Orange County, there were hundreds of thousands of Angeleno's (most of them not white and certainly not Trump supporters) spreading the virus around through noncompliance. And then between the protests and the economy re-opening, Los Angeles cases exploded.

Orange County has 1/3 the population of Los Angeles County and 1/10 the Coronavirus deaths (I could have used cases, because that would support my argument even more as OC has much less than 10% the cases of LA county, but I will go with the more accurate measure).

LOL, yeah, just fake media narratives, this didn't happen

This speaks to exactly my point. There's a reason noncompliance is so casual and has zero consequences in this state.

As opposed to what state? Where is the state where compliance was effectively enforced, especially in urban, nonwhite populations?

There isn't one. See my earlier post about our unique sense of individual entitlement in this country and how maybe that, and not the size of this country, might have something to do with why we've failed so hard. No state, even liberal California, can overcome our unique, pervasive American desire to fail here.

The media will never tell you this because it doesn't fit the narrative, but numbers don't lie. The truth is urban, non-white populations have had much lower compliance than even Trumpkin populations, and certainly magnitudes MUCH lower compliance than the average white population.

Now again, you can argue this is due to institutional racism; and this argument may even be partially true, but you first have to actually acknowledge reality to even get there, which we can't do because we are all caught under the spell of the media and their fake narratives.

Do you have numbers on mask compliance, or just cases and deaths?

Like I said; deaths/million and antibody levels are the most reliable measures of Covid spread. And they support my argument, not the fake media narratives you guys all fall for because it confirms your biases.

LOL Kelhus, one of the absolute dumbest morons in a forum full of them