The graph above, sampled from the site of the Illinois Department of Public Health and annotated by me, depicts the number of COVID-19 cases on a daily basis from March 10, the day after Gov. Pritzker declared a state of emergency, to the present. Gov. Priztker says we’re “bending the curve”. If we are, I don’t see it. The good news, I guess, is that the number of diagnosed cases isn’t doubling every six days, suggesting the outcome won’t follow the worst case scenarios.
What I think is happening is that despite the “stay at home” directives, banning public gatherings, closing the beaches, etc., the disease is running its course.
I continue to believe that the only public health measure that might have been effective would have been to ban all foreign travel starting in late December. Under the circumstances that would have required prescience.
It’s possible that the spread of the contagion within the U. S. might have been contained had we suspended domestic air travel and started epidemiological testing in late January. That would have required considerable political courage.
In the years, decades to come, the events of the last six months will undoubtedly be studied, rehashed, and second guessed millions of times. As I see it anyone trying to come to a complete understanding of COVID-19 and its spread needs to answer some questions:
- In the absence of full disclosure and complete cooperation from the Chinese authorities starting in December 2019, could we reasonably expect anything effective to have been done?
- Why was Italy so affected by the contagion?
- Why has the spread of the disease been so limited in Germany?
- Why is New York City so stricken? It accounts for a third of all of the cases in the United States. As a side note, why are the subways still running in NYC?
- Why are the prevalence and morbidity of the disease so different from state to state?
- Why do people of sub-Saharan African descent in the United States comprise such a large percentage of the cases of COVID-19 and an even larger percentage of the deaths due to the disease?
I think the answers to those questions will be a sort of litmus test.
Re : public transit – they did shut subways in Wuhan. It would undoubtedly be effective in limiting spread. It is also equivalent to declaring martial law, because of how reliant a dense city is on mass transport.