One of the few effective tools we have for slowing the spread of COVID-19 has been rendered ineffective in the southern states now experiencing record coronavirus infections. Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine told CNN host Anderson Cooper on Monday that the cases in those states "are rising so rapidly that we cannot even do contact tracing anymore. I don't see how it's possible to even do that."
COVID-19 infections are so now so prevalent in many areas, in other words, we simply can't determine where the infections are coming from or who else needs to be warned. In Arizona, around a fourth of all COVID-19 tests performed are coming back positive—a tell-tale symptom of rationed testing in which only the most obviously sick are receiving tests, and the wider public is not being tested at all. These states are now reaching uncontrolled and uncontrollable pandemic levels; we haven't yet seen for certain whether death counts will soar as they did in New York during the first wave of the pandemic, but there is absolutely no evidence suggesting they will not.