States Re-opening Too Fast Are Headed For More Cases, More Deaths-- Do Their Governors Even Care?

New York has over 17,500 confirmed COVID cases per million people. That's more than any country in the world. By that sensible metric, the dozen worst-hit countries so far are:

• Spain- 5,563
• Iceland- 5,278
• Ireland- 4,533
• Belgium- 4,437
• U.S.- 3,993
• Italy- 3,592
• Switzerland- 3,490
• U.K.- 3,114
• France- 2,698
• Portugal- 2,674
• Sweden- 2,502
• Netherlands- 2,457

Counties rapidly rising and that I expect to see joining that dozen worst-hit are Russia, Brazil and Pakistan, where the religious nuts are the mirror image of the Trump supporters in the U.S. and Pakistan-- which has 24,644 cases today (a one day increase of 1,430)-- may well turn into the worst-hit country in the world before this is over.

In the U.S. the dozen states with the highest number of cases per million people are:

• New York- 17,514
• New Jersey- 15,448
• Massachusetts- 10,930
• Rhode Island- 10,175
• Connecticut- 9,091
• Louisiana- 6,637
• Delaware- 6,276
• Illinois- 5,821
• Maryland- 5,042
• Michigan- 4,639
• Pennsylvania- 4,489
• Nebraska- 4,048

All but Nebraska were in the first wave of deadly contagion. The next wave-- the self-inflicted one based on states refusing to follow social distancing rules-- the Pakistan-of-America states-- are the ones that are beginning to feel the effects of governors who followed ideological diktats rather than any kind of scientific approach. These are the worst states steepening, rather than flattening, the curve. Only Nebraska, thanks to crackpot Governor Pete Ricketts, is on both lists. Notice that most of these states already have worse caseloads per million than many of the worst-hit counties already flattening their curves:

• Nebraska- 4,048
• Iowa- 3,631
• Indiana- 3,438
• Colorado- 3,269
• South Dakota- 3,554
• Mississippi- 3,054
• Georgia- 3,031
• Virginia- 2,618

Florida, Tennessee, Arkansas and Minnesota are also likely to see big spikes, Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas because of terrible decisions by terrible governors and Minnesota because of proximity to South Dakota's worst hot spot.

Axios reported yesterday that these states are still steepening the curve while Europe is flattening it. "Other countries-- even some hit hard by the coronavirus-- are beating back their outbreaks more successfully than the U.S.," wrote Dave Lawler and Caitlin Owens. "The number of new cases every day is holding steady in the U.S., but it's not going down-- a key benchmark many other countries achieved before loosening their lockdowns and social distancing measures."

In the U.S. as a whole, the daily rate of infections has peaked at under 30,000 a day. BUT "rather than falling, the rate stagnated. Outside of New York (which has bent its curve) the rate is actually continuing to climb. The U.S. continues to record several times as many new cases each day as any other country has at any time during the pandemic. The U.S. didn't lock down as tightly as some of those countries, in addition to a host of mistakes early in the response... Italy and Spain issued strict nationwide lockdowns that forced most people to remain inside except to shop for necessities. Spain didn’t allow children outside at all. 'Our economic shutdown... wasn’t as broad as some of the other countries', so there was more opportunity for the virus to spread. Even though we took pretty aggressive measures, they’re not at the same level,' said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the John Hopkins Center for Health Security. 'States in America that went into very restrictive lockdown were able to bend the curve down and reduce cases. We’ve seen that with New York and New Jersey. A lot of states-- Florida, Texas-- never went into or went into lockdown for very short periods of time,' Harvard's Ashish Jha says. Cases are rising in some states and falling in others, but the overall number of new cases each day has hovered around 30,000 for longer than a month."