Southeastern states happen to be COVID-cleanest nowdays

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If you go here https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/he ... and-cases/ you will find that they started to color the map NOT based on the overall cases but based on the cases last week, which makes sense: what happens last week is the ultimate indicator of how safe or unsafe it is. What happened overall is mostly history. In any case, the coloring of that map changes week by week. But this particular week the US South (by which we really mean southest) happens to be the cleanest. Which is interesting. I mean US South is a Republican stronghold, and we all know Republicans are the main anti-vaxers and anti-maskers. Yet the anti-vax/anti-mask states happen to be the cleanest nowdays. Of course it might all change a couple of weeks later. All in all it is just a bunch of turn taking. But that just goes to show that maybe vaccines and masks aren't as such a big deal as democrats make them out to be.

That's only officially diagnosed cases, right? Is there some kind of statistics on how many of the people who get the symptoms actually go and get tested? It could be that in some states people who get symptoms don't go and get tested, and so they aren't shown in the statistics. That's one thing that should be taken in to account when looking at them.

Of course, one thing that helps cleaning the numbers is that if the weak ones, the ones who're likeliest to get infected, have already died due to the virus beforehand, then of course they won't show on the statistics now.

But of course, if south is clean for real and it's not just faulty statistics, then good for the south and good for the world as a whole, too.

For now, after a hell of a summer surge.
Just wait till after everyone gathers indoors for the holidays.

It's discouraging that a topic related to public health gets posted on PP&R and nobody questions its appropriateness.

It's not clear what the map represents. It appears that the map represents TOTAL cases per unit area, not cases per some number of people.

Of course there would be more TOTAL cases in densely populated areas. And the more rural states, e.g. in the South, would naturally have fewer TOTAL cases and fewer cases per unit area, even if they have more cases per capita than other states.

The most relevant statistics are in the two columns "per 100,000 people" below the map.

Other factors being equal, one would expect states containing densely populated cities, such as NYC, to have both more total cases and more deaths per 100,000 people than the more rural states, because COVID is most likely to be transmitted in big crowds, which there are more of in large cities.

The states with the highest number of deaths per 100,000 residents are Mississippi (342), Alabama (326), New Jersey (317), Louisiana (316), Arizona (297), Oklahoma (294), New York (293), Arkansas (284), and Florida (283).

Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Florida are all in the sparsely populated South, so their presence in the top nine clearly indicates they are doing something wrong.

New York's and New Jersey's presence in the top nine is no surprise, given how densely populated we are. But what IS a surprise, looking at the map, is that these cases are NOT concentrated in the NYC metro area. On the contrary, they are concentrated in some of the more right-wing parts of each state.

Then it would seem that the map is inconsistent with the tabular data. Someone made a big mistake in creating this.

Hmmm, looking at this again, I think I now see the actual source of the apparent inconsistency.

The tabular data is not identified as to whether its pertains to all cases and all deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, or some recent window of time. More likely it's all cases since the beginning, I would guess.

On the other hand, the map gives you a choice of either "Current 7 day ave" and "All time," and the former is what comes up by default.

Anyhow, I'm not sure I trust these 7-day averages, which may be affected by delays in reporting. I find it hard to believe that Florida, Oklahoma, and Nebraska really had no COVID deaths at all this past week. On the other hand, the all-time data looks more reasonable.