Who’s Line Is It Anyway? was/is a television show first hosted by Drew Carey. The show’s ensemble cast were all gifted at improve humor.
Drew’s favorite line was something like:
“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter.”
Several parts of the United States’ response to the current pandemic remind me of that line. Today I focus on one such situation:
Episode 2: Geography?
I use California as the source for many of my examples because I live in that realm of unreality.
Recently, California’s governor unveiled a new, color-coded four-tier program to track state-wide progress in the COVID-19 pandemic by new cases and positive tests for the virus.
Purple, or Tier 1, indicates that the virus is widespread in the county — with more than seven cases per 100,000 residents or more than 8% of test results reported positive over seven days. Red (Tier 2) indicates “substantial” spread of the virus, while orange (Tier 3) indicates “moderate” spread, and yellow (Tier 4) indicates “minimal” spread of the virus in the county.
If one of the two metrics is higher than the other, the state will assign the county to the color associated with the highest rating. For example, if a county reports six cases per 100,000, but a 9% positivity rate, it will be rated purple.
I couldn’t find a rationale for the amounts of new cases or the percentage of positive tests that led to those values. I wasn’t surprised by that.
“Welcome to the show where everything’s made up…”
ASIDE
Riverside County is purple.
(County’s Status Map as of 9/8/20) - Map will update
- Palm Springs is in Riverside County. The city’s demographics do not match the majority of the county, and their demographic has high numbers.
- Imperial County is directly south of Riverside County. Imperial County has high numbers, too. People crossing the border from Mexico to find diagnosis and treatment for COVID-19 overwhelmed their medical facilities. Many patients were relocated from Imperial County to Riverside County.
These situations ensure that Riverside will be purple for a long time. But the vast majority of the county is nothing like the inclusive data reflects.
Back to Episode 2
On 9/9/2020 in a sub-headline, front page, above the fold, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported “County now on brink of case rate that could put it back to lowest tier. [sic]” The article is about the impact of 400 positive tests at the San Diego State University campus.
There are currently about 2000 students going to classes on the main campus that covers 288 acres.
- San Diego County covers 2,897,000 acres. SDSU makes up approximately .0001 percent of San Diego County’s physical size.
- San Diego’s current population is between 3-4 million people. SDSU’s current on-campus population makes up approximately .0006 percent of the total population.
Including isolated population anomalies without consideration of their isolation…
sounds a lot like an improv theater move to me.
Until next week…
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