It's even worse than it appears.
Sunday April 5, 2020; 11:38 AM EDT
  • Yesterday, I asked a somewhat nuanced question, basically why does the virus travel in waves across the United States? Why is it not distributed uniformly across the country? #
  • A retired bioresearcher sent via email a non-mathematical explanation that makes sense to me. Note he talks about places where Asians are in the US, it's a bit delicate, but since the virus originated in China, and I'm trying to understand why it's not everywhere, it is factually relevant.#
  • Here's the story:#
    • My degree is not in mathematics but after forty years in bioresearch I hope I know how to think logically. #
    • People do move freely about the US, but it isn’t random movement. There are also nuances in genetic, endemic disease, age distribution demographics, health care infrastructure.#
    • Travelers congregate at airports, on cruise ships, and mingle at tourist destinations. There have been numerous maps published that show how spread of the virus aligns with popular travel routes and political alignments. Winter holiday travel turned out to be a particularly bad idea last year.#
    • Our index case was already symptomatic when he left Wuhan and came home to Seattle in mid-January. New York didn’t see their first case until March (via Iran). Both are coastal cities with seaports, major airports, universities, and diverse populations, but NYC is half the size of Seattle and has about nine times as many people. New Yorkers literally can’t get away from each other.#
    • Chinese Americans are not homogeneously distributed across the US, and they tend to live, work, and travel in aggregates. NYC and Seattle demographics show about the same proportions of Asians, but NYC’s are jammed more tightly together and an airborne contagion would hit more people, more quickly there. #
    • California's significant Asian population is clustered in Santa Clara County, by far the hardest hit by the virus. The state has been under shelter-in-place orders since mid-March. #
    • Philadelphia has a tiny Asian population and they’re all in one district. Philly also has a very large and well-equipped hospital in Center City; they’re prepared.#
    • Drilling down into the data in my area, West Virginia was late to the party imo because the folks who choose to live there like their solitude in the woods, and they don’t travel much. This held back the spread in the western parts of adjacent states (Maryland and Pennsylvania) where the first cases weren’t seen intil mid-March. None of these areas have significant Asian populations.The two Maryland counties with large Asian populations recorded their first cases a month earlier.#
    • The wave thing is - once the virus is in the door, one way or another it’s gonna find you - it’ll getcha getcha getcha - unless it can’t, of course."#
  • If you have additional info re this piece, please post here. #

© 1994-2020 Dave Winer.

Last update: Monday April 13, 2020; 2:47 PM EDT.

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