Here’s the weekly update on the virus. As I predicted in my June 2nd post, we’ve started to see an increase in cases, at least for areas that I closely monitor. For the United States as a whole, the increase has been subtle, really just a flattening of a steady downward trend. For California and especially San Diego County, there has been a pronounced uptick in cases during the last week. The City of San Diego had some protests last weekend, but not nearly as much as in other cities like Minneapolis, NYC and LA. If the pattern for San Diego holds for other cities, they will experience more severe increases in cases. Oddly, many in the media strongly discouraged protests in favor of re-opening, but are seemingly promoting protests about police brutality without regard to precautions like mask wearing. Even the WHO is encouraging mass protests. Of course there are good reasons to attend a peaceful protest. If you go to a protest, please wear a mask. Of course, I have to discourage you from attending a riot.

I do have to point out that there are many factors that contribute to these increases, such as the ongoing re-opening, and no single factor can be blamed.

Endcoronavirus.org has introduced a new feature in the last week, a county level map showing the recent change in new cases. Clicking on a county will give you a plot of new cases for that county. High caseloads for urban areas is a well known pattern, but I’ve also noticed hot-spots of cases in certain rural areas. A new article in the Wall Street Journal may suggest a reason. Large families living in the same house may present an opportunity for rapid spread should someone be infected who lives there. As we discussed on May 27th, the virus spreads much more quickly in indoor venues than it does outside. This suggests that if you have a large family, members will need to be extra cautious to not bring virus in from the outside.

Don’t fear, but be smart,
Erik