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Unsanitized-060820
Arizona is seeing a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations since the end of its stay-at-home order.
First Response
I have remarked a number of times about how using aggregate statistics for the entire country misleads the public and policymakers. It would be like using one curve for all of Europe, for Spain and France and Italy as well as Switzerland and Belgium and the Netherlands, even though they handled the virus along different severities and trajectories. If there was one “Europe” curve it would have shown overall drops before certain countries had the pandemic under control, and the effects on ending lockdowns could have been disastrous.
But we are these United States. And while the pace of reopening has largely been the province of each particular state, given the interplay between them (such the habitual fight among the states for businesses, which means a longer lockdown could translate into the loss of a headquarters) and the use of the “one true curve” for America, the decision absolutely run off on one another. States like Georgia and Florida and Texas running out to reopen definitely affected the more cautious ones to act.
The overall trajectory on that one true U.S. curve is headed in the right direction, albeit gradually. But that tells us nothing about the picture in individual states. We can call this the Arizona problem.
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Arizona didn’t have much of an outbreak in the early going, with a little over 1,000 total cases and only 24 deaths through March. It took from April 24 to May 6 to double from 200 to 400 deaths, and then another 18 days to double to 800. Even now, if you looked at the data, you could make a case for the outbreak being somewhat muted.
But cases in the last week have risen pretty dramatically, faster than testing increases. There have been several consecutive days of over 1,000 positive tests. If you look at the seven-day average of new cases, it has doubled in Arizona, tops in the entire country. Friday saw a record number of cases and emergency room visits in the state.
That last point is the most discouraging. While hospital bed usage decreased slightly on Friday, overall hospitalizations are nearing a record high, as has ventilator use and ICU beds. Banner Health, the largest hospital network in Arizona, has maxed out on its external lung machines (a step beyond ventilators). The state’s not in that bad of shape on ventilators, but that’s changing every day. This is mostly a two-county problem in Arizona, in Maricopa (Phoenix) and Pima (Tucson), and ICUs are reporting near full capacity there. This could become the unflattened curve nightmare scenario warned about early on.
Arizona governor Doug Ducey ended the state’s stay-at-home order on May 15. This is around the time you would expect the effects of that to metastasize. But because the country is on reopening autopilot, it’s unclear how bad things would have to get before he reversed the relaxation and locked people down again. “Ducey’s own experts concede that the surge in cases has to do with easing restrictions,” writes Arizona Republic columnist Ed Montini.
University of Oregon professor Tim Duy said something interesting in his market report today: investors do not appear to be pricing in the potential for a setback. The reopening that has already taken place was influenced by conservative demands to get the economy moving again. The mass protests throughout the country has seen liberals—and most worringly, public health experts—rationalize the need for large gatherings to demonstrate against police brutality. New York City is reopening, albeit slowly, today, but they’ve had people in the streets for over a week (and contrary to prior reporting, deaths have continued there). I’ve seen more people without masks this weekend, more cars on the road, more people out and about.
The single curve showing progress has lulled us into thinking there’s progress everywhere, and you get the feeling of a point of no return. If the science demands another lockdown, I’m not sure the country will oblige. That’s going to be even more true in states whose leaders were already inclined to reopen early. For Ducey to reverse course as hospitals fill up would be an admission of defeat. The restaurants are crowded; would he dare take that away from patrons and business owners?
A few epidemiologists are out there screaming that the virus crisis has really just begun. Maybe they’re all a bunch of alarmists. Maybe most of the country will be able to handle the resumption of cases, maybe masking and smart behavior will continue to tamp things down. But even with all that, you still have to deal with Arizona.
Odds and Sods
Just a reminder that we’re partnering with the American Economic Liberties Project on a virtual event, “Making Facebook & Google Safe for Democracy.” We will be discussing the two advertising giants, the Section 230 protections for user-generated content, and the future of the internet. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) will be in conversation with Economic Liberties’ Sarah Miller, and then there will be a discussion with me, Economic Liberties research director Matt Stoller, and former Obama policymaker Karen Kornbluh. It’s happening on Wednesday, June 10 at 11am ET. RSVP here.
Today at the Prospect, Paul Starr discusses reopening schools, one of the most important things we need to figure out for the fall; without children occupied during the day, families that work are stuck, and the learning gap of keeping kids out for many more months is incalculable. It’s an important read.
Our full coronavirus coverage is at prospect.org/coronavirus. And we’ve had a significant amount of coverage of the George Floyd protests in recent days, you can find that here.
And if you have comments, tips, or perspectives, please email me.
Feeling Minnesota
Speaking of the George Floyd protests, the Minneapolis City Council announced yesterday that it had a veto-proof majority to disband the police department entirely, and start over with a community-based approach to public safety. Just a day earlier, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey was booed out of a rally in the most excruciating fashion I’ve ever seen for a public official, for saying “I do not support the full abolition of the police.” Now his city is doing just that—or at least ending the police force as Minneapolis has known it for decades.
Among lazy-thinking analysts, “Defunding the police” is supposed to be a political minefield for Democrats. But there is good evidence that what Minneapolis is doing will make the city safer, criminals more likely to get caught, and the police more trusted and respected. The concept is modeled after the experience of Camden, a New Jersey city right across the Delaware River from Philadelphia that throughout my childhood was a desperately poor town with a serious crime and police problem. Camden disbanded its police department, forced officers to reapply to a new county force that had far stricter rules on use of force and a reorientation to the actual safety of the city’s inhabitants. The result was a much lower crime rate and a much higher clearance of the remaining cases.
I don’t know the exact mechanism that will be used to get around the police union contract in Minneapolis (maybe a county force like Camden), but this goes well beyond the “mend it don’t end it” approach from Congressional Democrats. Even if you think there are some good elements to that bill, it doesn’t make the fundamental break to say that the current system is untenable and imposing fixes upon it unlikely to generate results. The power of this moment has been to open up policy conversations beyond the usual mush of blue-ribbon panels and data requirements. It’s actually reasonable to hit the reset button.
Today I Learned
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average is almost even for the year. (Financial Times)
- Meanwhile on Planet Earth, BP is cutting 15 percent of its workforce. (CNBC)
- And food banks are pleading for more assistance. (Politico)
- And even if all furloughed workers were asked back, the unemployment rate would be more than double than it was pre-pandemic, and rising. (Petersen Institute)
- New Zealand, meanwhile, has no coronavirus. It can be done. (Axios)
- Small business owners with criminal records are barred from federal loan assistance, which doesn’t make a bit of sense. (The Intercept)
- Big hospital chains took bailout funds and laid off workers. (New York Times)
- Large numbers of shipping crews are literally stranded at sea, threatening more supply chain snarls. (Financial Times)
