Yup, Israel is the outlier and a real head scratcher since it looks like it's outbreak originated in the high school and middle schools but it's also not the most disturbing news from around the world right now (though even taking it into account it says nothing about the elementary schools).
3 other countries in addition to Israel have a very high acceleration rate. Australia: which raises a real prospect for us of a winter bump and this despite that Australia has been widely praised for its strategy of shutting down interprovince transport. Japan: which has been widely praised for it's universal mask usage and which (unlike us) has some really good masks (not bandanas and t shirts) which seems to show universal mask usage while it may help is not sufficient to contain outbreaks. And most disturbing: Spain particularly in the Barcelona area, which has universal mask usage (again not bandanas or t shirts which are illegal there), is still not fully open, and which had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world (providing once and for all lockdowns don't work....as soon as you lift them it will accelerate).
Spain is critically important in the coming days. If they start to look like our sunbelt, it blows a hole in the theory some of us have been pushing that the virus eventually dies out because it died out in Sweden. If this is just a bump taking in place in areas that didn't have a full burn (a mini US) then o.k. there's still some hope in our near future. But if even a portion of Spain goes out of control again it means the burn out theory probably holds no water.
Which leaves only the Vitamin D/weather theory standing. That theory says the reason why LA wasn't hit very hard at the same time as NY and Spain and Italy was because when the initial outbreak happened we had nice weather and were out and about and getting our sun and Vitamin D and not indoors. The reason why Mexico, the tropics, Japan, our South, SoCal and Spain are getting hard hit is because it's very hot and people aren't hanging out in the sun. Norway and Denmark similarly have never had a mask requirement and in removing the lockdowns have not yet had a resurgence and Sweden died out on its own....is it because right now they have an abundence of sunlight and temperatures are nice outside?....same with Canada. The counterfactual to this theory is New York City, of course (or maybe its a combination of weather and burn out).
But where does that leave us? It means for Socal under either theory the worst should be over by the end of September. If the weather theory holds true we might escape the worst of a second wave but the northern US will have hell to pay as will the nordic countries and northern Europe. It means we are at a point where all containment measures are an utter failure, and we have to decide between perpetual lockdown and re lockdowns or just going forward and taking the risk (knowing the overwhelming cost).
What a horrible, awful no good week in a horrible, awful no good year.
I got that quote from a professor in a class I took at ASU. He mentioned that as he was passing out the results of his latest exam. Needless to say many in the class did not do well.
