For months, The New York Times has been generating a regular map that shows the relative danger from COVID-19 on a county-by-county basis across the nation. The levels on that map correspond to CDC levels that were generated last spring, each of which comes with recommendations on the level of caution that should be taken. A look at that map today shows the dangers of setting a scale before the conditions are at their peak, because almost the entire nations is swathed in deep purple, reflecting the highest “extremely high” level on the scale. That level comes with recommendations to avoid indoor activity, avoid nonessential travel, and avoid all events with more than a small number of trusted people. Those are still good recommendations.
But what’s needed is something beyond extremely high, because some counties are running five times than the cut off for “extremely high.” There are counties in Texas where over 0.1% of the population is testing positive for COVID-19 every day. Which is impressive. In the same way as watching a massive wreck happen over and over.
The best thing that can be said about this map is that there are marginally more areas that have slipped into the merely “very high” level when compared to the map made in late December. But the situation right now demands that everyone treat this as the most dangerous time since COVID-19 reached the United States. Because it is.
Looking back to September, a lot of the nation was in the high, medium, or even low, categories. But that period was in the trough between the “second surge” that was primarily focused in the South and the massive wave of cases that began in the fall. That third surge had the greatest immediate impact in the Upper Midwest, but it was so general that it washed the whole nation purple.
Now some of the areas that were worst affected a few weeks ago are seeing declines, in no small part because those areas were hit with staggering rates of infection and death that required tough action. Though in many cases effective action was left to local and county officials by governors more concerned about their own political ambitions than the health of their citizens (looking at you, Kristi Noem).
In the last two weeks, 49 states have seen a decline in new cases when compared to the peak period in the first two weeks of the year. However, it can’t be forgotten that the level of coronavirus spread around the nation at the moment is, as the color code says, extremely high. So high, in fact, that Tuesday’s “low” values were actually actually still at a point that would have been record highs any time before mid-November. The United States is still in the third and highest surge, with case loads still massive and rates of death higher than at any time in the pandemic. The 7-day moving average for COVID-19 deaths currently stands above 3,400. That’s not just a record high, but because of the lag time between positive tests and deaths, that number is still trending up.
In addition, local efforts at vaccination have stripped some areas of the workers who were doing testing. This is resulting in a decline in testing. According to Johns Hopkins, 21 states showed lower rates of testing this week when compared to last week, and for many of those states this is just part of a decline in testing that has gone on since mid-December. However, the rate of positive test results in 12 states has now dipped below 5%, indicating that some areas are managing to both begin rolling out vaccine while maintaining appropriate levels of testing.
Wednesday marked the first daily briefing from President Joe Biden’s coronavirus team, and the difference from the Donald Trump talking and purposely constrained language of the Trump team could not have been more stark. Biden’s team, led by White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients, continued to demonstrate the level of concern that Biden himself showed when signing a series of executive orders to address the pandemic. "This is a national emergency," said Zients. "Four hundred thousand people have died. Everything is on the table across the whole supply chain.”
Next week, President Biden has promised to increase the number of doses of vaccine rolling out to states to 10 million a week. Biden also announced the purchase of an additional 200 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. With a team pushing hard to remove roadblocks in vaccine distribution and supply production, there is a very good chance that every American adult who wants a vaccination, will receive it by summer.
It’s the most hopeful moment, as the nation finally sees the pandemic being addressed with the seriousness it should have seen from the beginning. It’s the most dangerous moment, as case counts remain high and new variants are coming from both outside and inside the United States. From here the nation could see a decline of cases, and deaths, as we move toward levels of vaccination high enough to check the spread of COVID-19, paired with a new emphases on testing and tracking to isolate pockets of remaining disease.
But we could just as easily see what we saw after the first surge, and the second surge—an even greater surge that builds on the hideously high levels of disease currently present in the nation. That’s why both President Biden and the members of his coronavirus team were careful to emphasize the same things: For the moment, the more important tool is not the vaccine, but the mask.
In fact … take two.