New York has flattened its curve. The Sun Belt has been flattened by it.
The state of New York has now mandated that travelers from 22 states — including California, Florida and Texas — quarantine themselves for two weeks upon arrival. That’s quite a turnaround from late March when other states, such as Florida and Rhode Island, were the ones trying to keep New Yorkers out. Over the past three months, the Empire State has flattened the curve, while Sun Belt states have been flattened by it.
On Sunday, New York had 605 new coronavirus cases. Florida had 9,344 new cases — more than 15 times as many. California had 6,074 new cases — 10 times as many. Both Florida and California have now overtaken New York for total number of cases, although New York still leads, by far, in the total number of deaths. Its grim death toll — 32,689 and counting — should serve as a caution against celebration. New York is hardly a model; the real models are countries such as South Korea (299 total deaths) and Australia (161 total deaths).
But our misfortune was primarily not of our own devising. New York City paid a heavy price for being the most dynamic and densely populated city in the country — the No. 1 travel destination for foreign travelers in North America. Covid-19 spread far and wide before anyone knew what was really happening. As of late June, about 1 in 4 of those tested for covid-19 antibodies in New York City tested positive. To add to our misfortune, we are located in the United States of Trump rather than in a rational place such as Canada or Europe. There has been no national lockdown, no national mask mandate, no national testing-and-tracing program. States such as New York have been on their own.
Given those constraints, I’d say New York has done a laudable job of dealing with the worst public health emergency in a century. We have emulated the example of developed countries, such as Italy, France and Spain, that managed to get their pandemics under control — while the rest of the country is emulating developing countries such as Brazil, South Africa and India, where the disease continues to rampage out of control.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/27/new-york-has-flattened-its-curve-sun-belt-has-been-flattened-by-it/
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