Officially busted 40k new cases and the highest 7-day moving average thus far. Spreading like wildfire.
To be honest, I think it's a combination of both. But when you look the daily numbers several weeks into the shut down, we were still getting 20k, 25k new a day during the shut down and at the height of everyone's "awareness". There's no question this is a more contagious mutated strand. I read stories of families in hospital rooms sitting with their dying loved ones. Everybody had all the appropriate protections, masks, social distancing, no telling what else and the entire family STILL caught the virus. If it's that contagious, I have no idea how we would have stopped the spread. Grocery store shopping alone would be enough to provide fertile ground for spread. Unless they're going to ration food and bring it to everyone's doorstep, it was always going to spread.
Except the MSM didn't mock or question the protestors like they did the people who were enjoying a day at Jax Beach mostly observing social distancing guidelines to boot. In reality, yes, it cuts both ways, but unfortunately, our press only cuts one way.
Was what worth it? The shut down? Well, you could make the case that it saved hospitals from being overrun and gave us some time to get mass testing in order. You could even say it saved some lives. The cost though was enormous. So if we're measuring worth...wow.. $4 to 5 trillion dollars is a lot of money for the marginal results the shut down produced. All in all, I'd classify it as an epic failure. Trump bears blame for that.
The shutdowns would have worked if they had not quit too early. But, I go from thread to thread saying the same thing and posting links from other countries where they drove the numbers low
There's the mistake you are still making. Comparing what happens in other countries and assuming it will be the same here. We were still hitting 20k new cases a day with regularity 8 weeks into the shut down. If you really want to compare, most European nations saw much quicker results with their shut downs and were able to limit spread to nominal figures. 20k new cases a day 8 weeks into a shut down is not working. At that pace, we would have had to stayed shut down until August and that's just not feasible. Even your Dem governors know that, which is why governors like Newsom haven't shut it back down. It's just not a viable option to keep the U.S. economy folded up for months on end. Not to mention all the other side effects of a shut down that would last 5+ months.
We didn't really shut down, but our social safety net is so poor that even a half assed shut down was intolerable after just a few weeks.
So you are suggesting there is a version now that is more contagious? I don't know if we have a new strain but it is not like it had to be super contagious to spread like wild fire in areas because a good chunk of the country are a bunch of idiots with regards to this virus. What you call the "height of everyone's awareness" still involved massive measures of stupid. Large gatherings, science deniers, never maskers, #livingmylife..... There was no "everyone's awareness". You can go back to the beginning of this thread and see how aware some people were. To think it had to be some sort of super contagious bug to spread in this country is just making excuses for an incredibly ineffective response.
Updated stats from the world o meter site as of 8 am EDT. There were 5 states with a decrease in active cases. There were 6 states with 1-2 deaths and 12 states with 0 deaths. I have been saying states in this all along but that includes Puerto Rico and DC, so there are 52 data points. Also of note, New Jersey passed New York and is now #1 in deaths per million population. I under reported NJ's deaths yesterday by 1300 so it could have happened yesterday.
Death rate crept up but I did under-report NJ's deaths yesterday by 1,300 but I am leaving numbers as originally reported.
Too many people ignored the shutdown orders/rules. Would not of mattered in the long run imo. However it slowed the spread so our ERs weren’t overrun.
We've handled this about as poorly as possible. And the proof is in the numbers. A colossal failure by the federal government.