Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002 From: Northwestern Georgia, USA Status: offline
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Chickenboy, The federalism aspects of America's response will indeed make fascinating studies later on. Early on in this thread, a number of folks thought federalism would play a negative role, but thus far that doesn't appear to be the case. As with Texas, my state of Georgia reacted at a state, county and local level much more quickly than many other jurisdictions, including some in Europe. Not because we're "better," but because we had the benefit of going later in the process, gauging from and adapting to what was going on elsewhere. Plus we had the inherit flexibility to use judgment at the local level. I don't know if that would work in other places or nations or political systems, but I like the way it works here. quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy I'm intrigued by the pattern of disease domestically. NYC and surrounds are still circa 60% of our national caseload. For an area of what-give or take-14 million people? So roughly 4.2% of our population has 60% of our national cases. Case counts in the other big cities: Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston haven't moved nearly that much. Locally, San Antonio area has less than 100 cases. I can't keep up with individual cases as much these days, but the vast majority of them until recently have been travel-related. Limited community spread. Houston, TX (soon to become the country's third most populous metropolitan area for all you home demographers out there) has a similarly small number. If the trend holds, I'd ask what is different about these urban centers than New York City per se. I have some ideas, but I'd like for the locals to put in their two bits about why they think New York City's metropolitan area is such a hotbed of disease compared to some other really big metro areas in this country. I think there's more evidence to suggest that there's "New York City and then there's everywhere else in the US." Which may be an encouraging prospect-for everyone not in New York City that is. All of the major metropolitan areas in this state have been proactive in shutting things down. Most Texas schools were on Spring break the first week in March (typically a week before most of the rest of the country). Many school districts (including my kids') slapped on an extension onto that time during the break. At first, it was until March 20. Then that was extended to April 6. Now it's April 24. So as far as our schools are concerned-we've been in de facto 'lockdown' for 20 days as of today. That will continue another 29 days at a minimum. Statewide and county/city lockdown mandates have come through in the interim. These 'essential worker only' mandates are in effect at least through April 9 here in San Antonio. Did New York City serve as an immediate warning for us here in Texas? Or were we watching Italy's agony and extrapolating that back here? Does this buttress the argument that the United States-with its disparate people and regions-really doesn't operate on a 'one size fits all' national mandate?
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