The Pandemic-- Whose Fault Is The Second Spike?

The Second Spike by Nancy Ohanian

The Wall Street Journal managed to do a whole piece on How the Covid-19 surge shifted to the South and West without once mentioning Trump or any of his stupid Republican enablers. It's not a bad post, although reporter Randy Yeip missed the whole meaning of "how" in his title.

Trump didn't invent coronavirus but the ferocity and endurance of the pandemic in America belongs entirely to him and that is the "how."

Friday was another terrible pandemic day for America. The country had 54,904 confirmed new cases. The 10 states with the most new cases Friday and ---> Saturday:

• Florida +9,488 ---> 11,458
• Texas +7,343 ---> 5,382
• California +4,509 ---> 3,718
• Arizona +4,433 ---> 2,695
• Georgia +2,784 --->2,826
• North Carolina +2,054 ---> 1,092
• South Carolina +1,831 ---> 1,854
• Tennessee +1,822 ---> 1,428
• Alabama +1,754 ---> 997
• Louisiana +1,728 ---> no report

Not in the "top 10," but also spiking badly: Mississippi, Ohio, Nevada, Missouri, Utah, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Yep noted that "Americans are seeing the coronavirus pandemic play out in two parts, as states that bore the brunt of cases in the early months of the pandemic have mostly contained the spread, while a new wave of infections is now threatening much of the rest of the country. At the start of April, New York and New Jersey accounted for fully half of all cases nationwide. Those two states plus five others saw a combined rate of confirmed infections that was nearly eight times that of the rest of the country. But mitigation efforts that brought everyday life practically to a standstill bent the curve dramatically." SO what about the states that eschewed those mitigation efforts? The curve bent-- but in the wrong direction.

Then just as life in many of those states tiptoed toward a new normal, Americans elsewhere saw a rapid rise in infections. The divergence has been so dramatic that through July 1 those other 43 states now account for two-thirds of all confirmed cases nationwide.

To be sure, there have been exceptions. While many of the states hit hardest in the earliest days have kept infections in check so far, states like Louisiana, Michigan and Washington are seeing a resurgence. But the center of gravity has clearly shifted south and west, as states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona experience explosive growth in case counts.

What might account for the shift? A look at the data suggests that mitigation efforts in the newest hot spots may not have gone far enough, or lasted long enough, to effectively tame the spread. In many of the states experiencing a surge in new infections, bars, restaurants and retail businesses were shut down for a much shorter period than in the states that saw the first wave of cases. And governors in places like New York and New Jersey were more aggressive in requiring the public to wear face masks.

States in the Northeast that accounted for much of the early surge in cases were among the first to implement restrictions. Confirmed infections in each peaked in April, but most didn’t lift restrictions on restaurants, bars and indoor retail until case counts had dropped considerably and were continuing on a downward trend.

Three other states that saw early surges also kept those restrictions in place until case counts were well off their peaks. But unlike New York and New Jersey, for instance, the downward trends had slowed or even reversed before restrictions were lifted. Washington state and Louisiana have seen a continued upward trajectory since then. Michigan’s rate of Covid cases initially resumed its decline but in recent weeks has seen cases rising again, including more than 130 traced to a bar in East Lansing, Michigan.

Many of the newest outbreaks are occurring in populous states in the South and West. California was the first state to implement a statewide stay-at-home order, but the state relaxed restrictions even while confirmed cases continued to rise. Arizona, Florida and Texas had kept case counts low, but never saw a significant decline in infection rates before reopening. Governors in all four states have now reimplemented some restrictions in an effort to contain the spread.

Is Trump and his sycophantic enablers to blame? That simple? Well, meet Pam Bondi, former Florida Attorney General and slimy corporate lobbyist; there is no worse Trump sycophant anywhere. She's also a psychotic anti-masker who has said that that Biden’s proposal to make masks mandatory nationally-- like most countries that have whipped the pandemic do-- is really a harbinger of Marxist totalitarianism. She was on Hannity's show this week comparing Biden to Castro.

“What’s it similar to? In Cuba, where Castro makes all school-aged children wear a Pioneer Scarf,” Bondi said Friday night on Fox News’ Hannity.

“What’s going to be next? Banning guns,” Bondi added. “The first words out of his mouth are talking about making every American wear a mask.”

Bondi said that was part of the Biden “socialist agenda,” a creed the Delaware Democrat purportedly shares with “Bernie Sanders and AOC.”

“That’s the path America would be headed down if that man was elected as President,” the former Attorney General contended.

...“We hope that people are going to stay socially distanced, are going to wear a mask, [use] hand sanitizer and be respectful of each other,” Bondi said to The Guardian.

“It’s not a legal requirement, it’s people’s own free choice. But we hope everyone will be peaceful and happy and have a great rally and social distance,” she added.

With Republicans desperate to hold onto Florida, facing polls that show a strong Biden lead consistently, expect more comparisons between Biden and Castro.

The hopes for Trump partisans is that some of them will stick.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported that After several months of mixed messages on the coronavirus pandemic, the White House is settling on a new one: Learn to live with it. Administration officials are planning to intensify what they hope is a sharper, and less conflicting, message of the pandemic next week, according to senior administration officials, after struggling to offer clear directives amid a crippling surge in cases across the country... At the crux of the message, officials said, is a recognition by the White House that the virus is not going away any time soon-- and will be around through the November election. As a result, President Donald Trump's top advisers plan to argue, the country must figure out how to press forward despite it. Therapeutic drugs will be showcased as a key component for doing that and the White House will increasingly emphasize the relatively low risk most Americans have of dying from the virus, officials said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for his part, has been issuing dire warnings on the future of the pandemic... He testified on Capitol Hill this week that if current trends continue, Americans could see as many as 100,000 new cases daily. In an interview with BBC Radio on Thursday, Fauci said: 'What we've seen over the last several days is a spike in cases that are well beyond the worse spikes that we've seen. That is not good news, we've got to get that under control or we risk an even greater outbreak in the United States.'"