Perspective.
This is true (for now), but part of the reason it’s true is that in some places the first wave never ended. It did in New York. Go look at the graph of deaths from COVID-19 there and you’ll see a picture-postcard version of an epidemic curve being crushed. They had a ferocious first wave. It’s now over.
But New York is the exception, not the rule. You can see the trend in confirmed cases in all 50 states plus a few territories at a glance right here. In just 20 jurisdictions are the trendlines clearly downward. In 12 they’re flat, and in 21 they’re up recently. In the United States as a whole, the daily number of new confirmed cases hasn’t moved much for an entire month despite the huge merciful decline in the New York tri-state area. There’s a “background noise” level of daily infections now, around 20,000 or so, which we seem to have collectively decided is acceptable and/or unavoidable. So while it’s true that the spread isn’t getting worse nationally, it’s not getting better either. The first wave rolls on endlessly, at least in terms of confirmed cases.
The number of daily deaths has dropped quite a bit, though, which I mentioned in my post this morning and which Pence rightly mentions here. That’s genuine progress.
While talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage, more than half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable. Every state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of three, have positive test rates under 10%. And in the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settings—prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilities—and contain them.
Lost in the coverage is the fact that today less than 6% of Americans tested each week are found to have the virus. Cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U. S. dropping to 20,000—down from 30,000 in April and 25,000 in May. And in the past five days, deaths are down to fewer than 750 a day, a dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few weeks ago—and a far cry from the 5,000 a day that some were predicting…
The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and these grim predictions of a second wave are no different.
