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Is the U.S. heading toward California, which has America's best COVID numbers, or Michigan, which has the worst?
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After enduring a steep, nationwide surge over the holidays — followed by a decline in cases that was just as steep and just as widespread — America has entered a strange new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
How strange? Just look at the wildly uneven outbreaks unfolding right now in California, Florida and Michigan.
Nationally, the pace of vaccinations continues to accelerate, with an average of 3 million doses being administered every day. Yet the spread of variants such as B.1.1.7 — a strain that’s more contagious and deadly than earlier versions of the virus — is accelerating too. As a result, cases have started to level off or even inch up nationally, and experts are debating whether a so-called fourth wave is upon us.
It’s a race between the vaccines and the variants, they say.
But the truth is a bit more complicated — and perhaps a bit less scary. Zooming in on California, Florida and Michigan helps explain why.
These big states have some things in common. All three previously experienced large waves of infection. All three have at least partially vaccinated about a third of their residents, with California at 35 percent, Michigan at 31 percent and Florida at 31 percent, in line with the U.S. overall. And all three appear to be rife with variants; nationwide, Florida, Michigan and California currently rank No. 1, No. 2 and No. 6, respectively, in the number of B.1.1.7 cases detected to date.
Yet their COVID-19 outbreaks couldn’t be more different.
On one end of the spectrum ... “California now has the lowest positivity rate in the country,.” Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted Monday, and he’s right: Just 1 percent of the state’s COVID tests are coming back positive at the moment, half the rate of the next closest state. New cases (current average: 2,700 per day) have fallen to their lowest level since last June, and hospitalizations (current average: 2,500) are lower than they’ve been since last April, at the very start of the pandemic. On Tuesday, Newsom announced that California — which has spent the last few months steadily advancing through a tiered reopening system while keeping its public mask mandate in effect — will “fully” reopen on June 15 if current trends continue.
Florida is closer to the center of the spectrum. There, masks are not mandatory, bars and restaurants have been open for months — and test positivity (9.5 percent) is more than nine times as high as California’s, with a daily case count that’s twice as high in absolute terms (5,500, on average) and nearly four times as high on a per capita basis. Infections are also heading in the wrong direction, rising 20 percent over the last two weeks — just like the U.S. as a whole. Hospitalizations may be starting to tick up as well.
And then there’s Michigan.
The Great Lakes State is currently suffering through the worst COVID outbreak in America. Over the last two weeks, Michigan’s average number of new daily cases has soared by 88 percent, to 6,700, and hospitalizations have risen even more (114 percent). The percentage of residents currently hospitalized in Michigan is five times as high as in California and nearly twice as high as in Florida. ...
So how to account for the enormous differences right now among the COVID outbreaks in California, Florida and Michigan? All three have a relatively high level of variant spread. All three have the same level of vaccination. It doesn’t compute to say the only two factors here — the only two contestants in the race — are variants and vaccines. There’s more going on. ...
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