Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) doesn’t seem to have a sense of urgency about implementing a similar order in her state. “Y’all, we are n...
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) doesn’t seem to have a sense of urgency about implementing a similar order in her state.
“Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York State, we are not California,” she Said on Thursday, according to the Montgomery Advertiser. “Right now is not the time to order people to shelter in place.”
In terms of raw case totals, that’s true. Data from Johns Hopkins University compiled through Thursday show that Alabama’s case total is in the hundreds, compared to thousands of cases in Louisiana and California and tens of thousands in New York.
But, again, the concern that shelter-in-place orders are meant to address is the spread of the virus. And on that metric, things in Alabama don’t compare quite as well.
On the graph below, lines that increase more rapidly (have a steeper slope) have seen faster spreads since the 10th recorded case in that state. It’s hard to tell, but Alabama’s line is rising faster than California’s.
Over the past seven days, the number of confirmed cases in California has increased by an average of 22 percent each day. The number of cases in Louisiana has grown by an average of 29 percent. In New York, the rate has averaged 33 percent — slightly higher than the 32 percent average increase in Alabama.
In other words, the virus has been spreading nearly as fast in Alabama as in New York over the past week. The number of cases in New York from March 19 through Thursday grew by more than 32,000, a 606 percent increase. In Alabama, 439 new cases were added in that period, but that was a spike of 563 percent.
Remember that New York is also more populous than Alabama. This has been a subtext to a lot of the debate over how to limit the spread of the virus, an assumption that less densely populated places have something of a defense against it. If we control for population, though, we see that Alabama’s adding new cases relative to its population faster than New York did. Not as fast as Louisiana, but…
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