Here's What is Scaring CDC Director Rochelle Walensky

 

On Monday CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said, “we have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared.”  She added that she is having recurring feelings of "impending doom."

What's scaring her? An uptick in the number of states that are experiencing an increase in COVID-19 infections, after a couple months of decreases almost everywhere. It's especially concerning given that increasing numbers of Americans are being vaccinated.

To show where the problems lie, Corona-zona Labs made a map using data from the CDC Socrata API. For each state we retrieved new cases for the seven days preceding March 22 and March 29, normalized these to represent new cases per 100K people, averaged the values and subtracted the value for the 22nd from the value for the 29th. This yields a positive number in states where cases are increasing and a negative number in states where cases are decreasing.

Clearly there are problem areas in the Upper Midwest, especially Michigan (a state I've flagged before), and the northern part of the Eastern Seaboard. And needless to say, Florida. It's particularly worrisome that Alaska has such an increase despite leading the nation with 22.9% of its population fully vaccinated.

We've Seen This Movie Before

Dr. Walensky might also be scared because she knows pandemic history.  It's laid out in an excellent piece in The Conversation. One-hundred years ago, people became sick and tired of measures meant to mitigate the Spanish Flu. Business and churches complained about being closed, people wanted their kids back in school, and mask-holes were out in force, etc. etc. Just like today.  

Once the initial wave of infections died down people "packed into movie theaters and dance halls, crowded in stores and shops, and gathered with friends and family." Their reward was a second and third wave of infections that resulted in thousands of excess deaths.

As Santayana (probably) said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  A great reason to stay away from that marshmallow. 








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