As states across the country start to reopen at the urging of Donald Trump, remember this: We won't know the results of this wild public health experiment for about six weeks (the time it takes for the coronavirus to spread, incubate, and cause death). What we do know is that many regions around the country that were previously insulated from the worst effects of the coronavirus are already starting their ventures in a compromised position.
Just about the only place in the country that claim to have likely seen the worst days of COVID-19 is New York, which it still in lockdown mode. Some immediate panic has also receded in other major urban centers like New Orleans and Chicago. But even as daily death tolls recede in New York City, the nation as a whole has not seen fewer than 1,000 deaths per day in more than a month, according to the New York Times. And new infections nationwide continue at a rate of about 25,000 a day, increasing the total number of national cases by between 2%-4% daily.
The following graph demonstrates how, as the New York metro area's daily infection rate decreases, the rest of the country is picking up the slack.
Some of that slack is being picked up by other major urban centers like Chicago (2,000-plus new cases per day) and Los Angeles (1,000 new cases per day), and cities where the daily infection rate is now higher than it was a month ago, such as Boston, Dallas, and Indianapolis.
But some other areas of the country pushing up the national case counts are areas that were previously thought to be safer than big cities. Spikes in infections in some smaller towns and rural regions can usually be tied to a major industry, like meatpacking, prisons, nursing homes, and factories. The Times provided a couple examples of new national hot spots:
- Dakota County, Nebraska, where there's a Tyson beef-processing plant, suddenly has the third-most cases per capita in the country after having no known cases nearly a month ago;
- Trousdale County, Tennessee, home to 11,000 residents and a private prison, suddenly saw its case count spike from 27 to 1,344 over the course of 10 days. Bledsoe County, another prison site, has also become a hot spot in the state.
Evidence continues to mount that smaller towns and rural areas of this country haven't even come close to seeing the worst of this pandemic. Opening before testing is more prevalent across the country will ensure the virus has a chance to take hold in areas that had mostly escaped unscathed until recently. Many of these areas already have incredibly strained health systems and are in no way prepared to deal with an onslaught of sick COVID-19 patients.
And unfortunately, since so many states are heading down the path of reopening at similar times, the country likely won't know the results of this public health experiment until it's too late—sometime around mid-June.