Here in California, new lockdowns and travel restrictions are the order of the day. This extreme response to rising COVID-19 cases is based on ICU capacity, so it’s perfectly reasonable. However, it’s prompted a spate of articles about how the coronavirus is “raging out of control” in California with an astonishing 22,000 new cases recorded yesterday.
I don’t understand. This is roughly 10 percent of all new cases in the country, and California has a little more than 10 percent of the US population. It’s basically what you’d expect. To test this, I made a chart (of course I did):
This shows two things. First, as goes the country, so goes California. We’re just following the overall trend. Second, for the past couple of months we’ve been substantially below the national average. I suppose you can say that cases in California are “raging out of control” simply because COVID-19 is raging out of control practically everywhere, but that’s pretty deceptive. In fact, California is doing relatively well. As of yesterday, we were about one-quarter below the national average.
So what’s with the news coverage? Can’t these folks do simple division?
