A report released this week by the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force warns that 21 states are now in the “red zone” and need to take aggressive steps to slow the spread of COVID-19.
That sounds serious. But according to new, comprehensive national guidelines from a network of research, policy and public-health experts convened by Harvard University’s Global Health Institute and Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, the latest federal report probably isn’t serious enough.
Why? Because the steps it recommends may be too weak to suppress the virus, and the threshold at which it recommends them may be too high.
The Trump task force, for instance, doesn’t advise authorities to issue stay-at-home orders — anywhere. But if the Harvard experts had their way, 13 states would lock down right now. Another 22 would be considering lockdowns. ...
“The public needs clear and consistent information about COVID risk levels in different jurisdictions for personal decision-making, and policy-makers need clear and consistent visibility that permits differentiating policy across jurisdictions,” said Danielle Allen, director of Harvard’s Safra Center. “We also collectively need to keep focused on what should be our main target: a path to near zero case incidence.”...
the Harvard group says that “at the red level, jurisdictions have reached a tipping point for uncontrolled spread and will require the use of stay-at-home orders and/or advisories to mitigate the disease.”
Right now, that would mean 13 of the Trump task force’s 21 red-zone states returning to lockdown: Florida (with a staggering 48.1 new daily cases per 100,000 people), Louisiana (46.2), Mississippi (43.5), Alabama (39.1), Arizona (36.6), Tennessee (34.1), Georgia (33.8), Nevada (33.0), South Carolina (30.1), Texas (27.9), Idaho (27.5), Arkansas (26.4) and Oklahoma (25.6).
