I agree that political specifics and "blamestorming" are best avoided as it just leads to side discussions and no minds will ever be changed, but, for example ..... yesterday after losing a football game, a college football coach called for the university to lift the restrictions and fill the stadium with 90,000 people so they could have an edge over the visiting team ? Really ? how many lives are worth that extra edge ?
Florida Gators head coach Dan Mullen wants Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at full capacity, pandemic be damned.
www.si.com
A wedding in Maine was attended by 65 people (with up to 100 on site) .... As of September 20 ... there's been 270 new infections and 8 deaths, none of the 8 were people who attended the wedding but died because someone brought the infection home.
When you see discussions about the dominance of the SEC in college football, .. the SEC has won 10 of the 14 championships, and IIRC, played in all but 1 championship games. Fans claim it's because of TV money, favoritism, and many other reasons and like politics, no one is going to convince folks on either side to change their opinion. Same is true with brand loyalties for PC componenets. But the fact remains, when you look at the NFL Draft, for 14 years running, the SEC has "won" the NFL draft placing more players in the NFL every year for 14 years in a row .... and by large margins.
That kinda takes it outta the realm of opinion.
Different states face different challenges ... States with < 10 people per square mile are not facing the kind of challenge that states with multiples cities in excess of 1 million people. People's health is the main focus here .... and there is certainly nothing to be gained blamestorming. But we have to be most concerned about where the new infection rate is high and where it is is low ... if it's rising, then whatever they are doing is not enough ... where it's falling, then what those folks are doing is working. This is simple .... math and science are not subject to opinion. If you live in a state at the top of the list, what they are doing is not working ...the states at the bottom of the list are doing it right.
Every aspect of life, regulation, habits, mask policy, habits, work schedules, whatever should be evaluated. Any commonality among those at the top indicates a probable cause of increased infection .... any commonality among those at the bottom will indicate a high likelihood of "best practices". While I do not see any benefit to discussing political ideology in an open forum, we also can't say let's not consider it as a contributing factor in each state's ability to cut infection rates.
As of today, the worst to best are:
(This table is sorted by places with the most cases per 100,000 residents in the last seven days )
North Dakota 459
South Dakota 448
Montana 339
Wisconsin 305
Utah 264
Guam 261
Idaho 236
Nebraska 232
Missouri 218
Iowa 215
Oklahoma 199
Arkansas 189
Wyoming 188
Tennessee 186
Alaska 169
Kansas 162
Mississippi 150
Minnesota 143
Indiana 139
Kentucky 136
Illinois 130
Alabama 125
North Carolina 123
Nevada 118
New Mexico 116
Rhode Island 115
South Carolina 111
Louisiana 99
Texas 98
Delaware 90
Colorado 89
Puerto Rico 88
Virginia 83
Georgia 83
Michigan 82
Ohio 81
West Virginia 81
Pennsylvania 74
Florida 67
Maryland 66
Washington, D.C. 63
Arizona 63
New Jersey 60
Massachusetts 59
California 58
Oregon 57
Washington 53
New York 50
Connecticut 49
Hawaii 46
New Hampshire 36
Maine 16
Northern Mariana Islands 13
Vermont 13
U.S. Virgin Islands 4
American Samoa 0