[manaboutown]

Originally Posted by ColdNoMore

Golfing in ABQ (Land of entrapment).

Arroyo Del Oso, a public course in the NE Heights. Back in the mid 1970s I lived in a house on the eastern edge of that course.

[ficoguy]

New Jersey is biting the dust because they were afraid to limit interaction in 2 large religiously populated communities - Lakewood and Teaneck.

[ficoguy]

Originally Posted by Velvet

So then the governors of Arkansas etc are doing the best job ever!

I think that some governors were facing much more challenging circumstances than others.

And some were afraid (NJ) to clamp down on densely populated close quarters living highly interactive religious communities

[Altavia]

Originally Posted by manaboutown

Since I grew up in New Mexico and still have business interests and friends there I am following the Wuhan virus in that state. The urban Albuquerque area has the most cases. Nine assisted living facilities located around the state contain significant percentages of infected residents and employees. The rural counties are all but untouched. What that tells me is that the density of a population has a lot to do with the chance of becoming infected.

Also population centers having high percentages of people who travel for business and personal reasons have relatively high infection rates.

And people who work/spend time in buildings/facilities where the air is recirculated and shared. Elevators are a likely hot spot.

[GoodLife]

Originally Posted by queasy27

Using the OP's logic, I suppose it stands to reason that the country with the highest number of infections indicates how well that country's administration has handled the crisis.

That's a valid question which we can explore by looking at the data. I look at confirmed deaths per million inhabitants for comparison.

Belgium 470
Spain 428
Italy 384
France 296
United Kingdom 227
Netherlands 210
Sweden 149
USA 117

China data is a joke, it's estimated that 40,000 died in Wuhan alone.

Confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people - Our World in Data

So we're doing better than a lot of advanced western societies with similar levels of international travel visitors.. We know the virus spread from China via air travel, so you can also look at that data.

Countries with highest tourism per year.

France 89 million
Spain 83
USA 80
China 63
Italy 62

The World's Most Visited Countries - WorldAtlas.com

We can drop China from the list as the virus originated and spread from there. So it's no wonder that the countries hardest hit are also the most visited. Too bad China did not shut down Wuhan until after 7 million got the heck out of dodge and spread the virus all over the world.

How the Virus Got Out - The New York Times

how the virus spread nyt - Bing video

[GoodLife]

Originally Posted by ColdNoMore

I can't help but wonder if we hadn't pretty much wasted the whole month of February, in getting ready at the national level...would we still be leading the world in cases?

Perhaps the administration was getting some inaccurate advice.

Top disease official: Risk of coronavirus in USA is '''minuscule'''; skip mask and wash hands

Virus Experts' Early Statements Belie 'Prescient' Portrayal | RealClearPolitics

[queasy27]

As an exercise, I compared each state's population density against their total number of confirmed cases. Probably not surprising that there's a correlation between more people per sq mile and a greater number of cases.

States that have high density populations primarily in their big cities have more of a disparity in rankings -- for example, NY is #8 in overall density but #1 in number of cases. The biggest outlier is D.C. with the highest population density but #32 in number of cases.

The Delta column indicates the difference in ranking between population density and number of cases.

I uploaded to Google Drive since Excel attachments aren't allowed here.

[skyking]

Originally Posted by queasy27

Using the OP's logic, I suppose it stands to reason that the country with the highest number of infections indicates how well that country's administration has handled the crisis.

Per capita. The larger the population the higher the number of infections. Get it?

[Topspinmo]

Originally Posted by ColdNoMore

I can't help but wonder if we hadn't pretty much wasted the whole month of February, in getting ready at the national level...would we still be leading the world in cases?

maybe 375 million and more traveled all over the world in January, February, and March has something to do with it infecting hundreds of thousands along the way?

[queasy27]

As an indicator of how successful countries have been at controlling the spread, here's a chart from April 9 that shows the number of confirmed infections per 1M in population. Only countries with over 4M population and more than 2K cases were included.

Spain: 3192
Switzerland: 2,734
Italy: 2,307
Belgium: 2,049
Austria: 1,463
Germany: 1,366
United States: 1,321
Portugal: 1,278
Ireland: 1,251
France: 1,240
Netherlands: 1,200
Norway: 1,137

Standard disclaimer from Statista: "The number of actual cases in a country is going to be higher than official figures show, with testing rates also varying dramatically. As with all figures relating to confirmed cases, they should be treated with caution."

[allus70]

Yes, but there are 3 airports in the NYC Metro area, it is also the financial & media of the US. In addition, NYC has one of the largest rapid transit system in the world with 5.7 million riders utilizing it daily.

[Chatbrat]

In NJ a lot of deaths are in nursing homes, they are equal to a land locked cruise ship, disease distribution centers

[MarkGoldberg]

I don’t think the purpose was to compare how effectively each state is handling the crisis. It is only to state the relative number of deaths.

[dougjb]

If we are to judge how well Governors are handling the situation based on infections, perhaps we should do the same for national leaders. So, which country has the highest incidence rate?

The USA of course, by far. Does that mean our national leadership has failed us?

[biker1]

We don't which country has the highest incident rate. We do know which country has the highest reported incident rate. They are not the same and we may never know the real answer.

Originally Posted by dougjb

If we are to judge how well Governors are handling the situation based on infections, perhaps we should do the same for national leaders. So, which country has the highest incidence rate?

The USA of course, by far. Does that mean our national leadership has failed us?