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20 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: March 19 Update”

  2. cld

    On another national health crisis,

    whenever the question of lead in crime comes up certain parties inevitably bring up crime in Chicago.

    Here's all about lead in Chicago water and throughout Illinois,

    https://this.kiji.is/745939504662708224

    . . . .
    Between 2015 and 2020, tap water in dozens of Illinois homes had hundreds and even thousands of parts per billion, or ppb, of lead — just as extreme as what researchers found during the same period in Flint, where mismanagement of the public water system exposed children to the toxic metal and drew a world spotlight to the scourge.

    East Moline found one home with 3,000 ppb of lead in tap water, records show. The Rockford suburb of Loves Park detected 2,700 ppb of lead in a home. Southwest of Joliet, the water system in Coal City found 1,260 ppb of lead in one of its samples.

    Utilities in the three cities were among 224 statewide where at least one home had lead levels at or above 40 ppb, a threshold the U.S. EPA once declared an “imminent and substantial threat to pregnant women and young children.” Others in the Chicago area included Bartlett, Cicero, Lake Barrington, South Elgin and Wauconda.
    . . .
    By far the state’s worst lead-in-water problems in recent years are in University Park, a south suburb on the border of Cook and Will counties.

    Samples of tap water collected since 2019 in the predominantly Black community contained as much as 5,300 ppb of lead and averaged 54 ppb, according to the Tribune analysis of data obtained from the Illinois EPA through a Freedom of Information Act request.
    . . . .

    2. golack

      I remember when Kevin advocated lead clean up in cities (window sills, pipes, etc.) since they still routinely had problems.

    3. rick_jones

      Dozens. Across Illinois. Out of how many samples across Illinois? I didn't find that in the referenced article. I did find:

      "Every Chicago home and two-flat built before 1987 likely gets water from a lead pipe. The city’s plumbing code required use of the toxic metal until Congress banned the practice.

      Street work made the problem worse, in particular water main replacements launched under Mayor Richard M. Daley, rapidly expanded during Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s eight years in office and continued through the first years of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration."

      Judging by the photos at that page, Chicago is replacing the service lines with polyethylene. One wonders what we will learn about that in the decades to come.

  3. golack

    NV joins the under 10 new cases/day/100K club, WY bumps up enough to be excluded. At 10 states, PR and NMI:WA, OR, CA, NV, AZ, NM, KS, MO, AR, HI.
    LA and WI just above 10; AL, GA, OK getting close.

    TX just dropped to 13.8--it would be great if if could keep that up.
    FL holding more or less steady around 21.
    PA (21.2) and IL (13.7) might be starting to trend up.

    Holding at 5 states in the red (>25). NY numbers dropped, MI and NJ are still going up. RI and DE steady. New England drifting up--CT about to go above 25.
    MN looks on cusp of numbers shooting up, ala MI.

    WV, early vaccination darling, has cases and surprisingly, deaths, going up, though hospitalizations are down. There are reports of unreported deaths coming to light, so these may just be a series of data dumps.

    Also, talk of a NY variant that is even more infectious than the UK variant.
    Mask up.

    2. akapneogy

      I wish someone would present the time evolution of the national covid data in the form of an undulating surface over the map of the US. It could help us visualize better how the infections are spreading in space and time.

    3. Midgard

      The only place having a rise in cases over the last few weeks is Michigan. That is it. Why Michigan? Because Michigan sucks.

      1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        Whitmer should have reopened the state.

        The Dutch Falange has responded to Big Gretch's intransigence by electively infecting their Wolverine Watchmen footsoldiers to spite her.

  4. D_Ohrk_E1

    As we come closer to the end of the pandemic, the infection rate at the hyper local level becomes self-selecting.

    Even knowing that no community is monocultural in the political sense, those communities with a high number of people who believe the pandemic is real will have effectively lowered their R0 to below 1. If not now, it will occur very soon as more people become vaccinated. The exception to this are African-American communities with low vaccination rates, for which masks are their greatest tool to lower R0.

    Communities with a low number of people who believe the pandemic is real will continue to have elevated R0 until a majority of them can no longer infect others. Some of those folks who can no longer infect others will be dead people. If they're extremely unlucky, one of these communities may become ground zero for a vicious mutant that will be more effective at infection and death (but not enough to self-extinguish), wiping them out.

      1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

        Yup.

        Louisiana is about to elect the COVID widow of a dead 41 year old GQPer House member to complete his just started term.

        I just thank the heavens Cokie Roberts isn't around to sing the Widow Letlow's praises as another brave Cajun spouse overcoming so much & so selflessly like Cokie's own white rights mom.

      2. D_Ohrk_E1

        I didn't say they would work neatly. But we're at the stage in the pandemic where things are more cleanly separated than even three months ago.

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