How should we unpack? – 2020 Election

The election we’re having in 2020 is going to be important for countless different reasons but the main thing that’s going to be on peoples mind is going to be COVID-19. Not November 3rd but Oct 9th, 18th, and the 27th, the three weeks prior to the election. If this was a court of law, the evidence would be circumstantial but also past the point of the severity. It would cross a threshold where any standard of deviation doesn’t change the grim picture ahead. While COVID-19 is now begun to being an endemic virus, this is not thing to simply ignore for the populations health and the way that compounds to higher rates of death. Some of what we’ve learned gives us a better glimpse to what we can expect regarding the outcomes of the virus spread. One is that it is rapid and can take days to develop symptoms but with that is deaths lag so don’t fall for rising infections without deaths. We know three-four weeks out of a surge of infections do the deaths begin to add up and we begin to tally them.

First is to look outside to what can be learned for most countries to understand our outlandish position. India has peaked for now but shows the immense risk for their populations. Europe is currently in their second wave, which began to really show itself the end of August. Spain, France, and the Untied Kingdom cases are rising dramatically and providing proof to the theory of the second wave being worse than the first. Mexico is trending upwards and while Brazil’s trends are falling right now, they’re outcomes vary greatly. Lastly, is that Germany seems to be the model not our neighbors to the north. Canada’s cases are starting to resemble the rises Spain and France were beginning to see a month ago.

Coming back home, cases on a whole have begun to rise, but not at the same rate as the European countries in particular are experiencing their second waves. We cannot measure the space the United States is in through the same way we analyze them because they’re statistical profile is so different, highlighted during the summer, you cannot glean the same outcomes in response to COVID-19. Where it’s relative is we really need to understand the scale of the current rise of cases in the United States. The fear is our second wave of the virus can look a lot more catastrophic compared to what these other countries are facing now. Let’s take the analogy of the pandemic waves and think of it literally. The data can represent the crests of the first waves.

Now taking out the United States, those other Countries dropped their cases down to a low level for an extended period of time due to their populations preventive behaviors. There’s a clear visible trend to see the rise in cases and be properly concerned to ready yourself once more for being more diligent/militant in those behaviors as they did in March through May/June. The issue with their outcomes and what the United States is that the cases never fell to any discernable level of acceptance to signify the end of a wave.

The situation in America it’s closer to resembling a never ending storm surge that has/had been dropping very slowly. To really understand the current leveling off and stagnation of cases is largely due to behavior in populations and schools holding in-person classes for the wrong age group. For that we need to go to state by state data to know what’s happening beneath the surge for what a second wave looks like for us. Only Arizona, Connecticut, Florida*, Georgia, Louisiana*, NY, NJ, Oklahoma, and Vermont are falling in cases. Twelve other states are stagnant as far as number but that isn’t a good because if the cases have not fallen to low levels like like NY, NJ and Vermont did, that stagnation is not a sufficient and can be viewed in the negative. In the writing of this piece, New York and New Jersey have begun to see their cases rise, Florida’s cases are dropping due to their elderly populations sensitivity to COVID-19. As the dust settles, there are still 40+ states in vulnerable situations where there are 23 states that cases are rising significantly, nine of which are rising in very dramatic levels. Of the 23 states with rising cases, most are almost all rural, but predominantly red states (13 or 56%). While all states were impacted by the first wave, Trump himself made the calculation of looking only at Republican run states as far as judging the response to COVID-19. The issue is that this data is maintaining a stagnation to the already slow falling American cases.

Remembering the first point of the United States having over 80% of the those states are in compromised situations. Next is that due to the issue of the size of our first wave potentially blinding us to and exponential rise in cases which in it’s first iteration or wave, crippled the global economy. Third is that Europe is proving the theory of the second wave being worse than the first wave. In finality, we know that deaths are a lagging indicator so when this begins to really impact a majority of red lead states, there will be a shift. If there’s a coalition of folks who want to have maintained power the data would suggest to, none stop talk about healthcare and the mishandling of COVID-19 by Trump and Conservative leaders. It is not combative to the importance of November 3rd because if that date holds greater importance, the Biden/Harris Campaign or any coalition that wants power would promise and DELIVER on healthcare. It’s really that simple.