Not sure what you're driving at, but America's attitude towards tobacco has definitely changed a lot in the last 40 years.

Mostly a function of the people who like it dieing off

There's also a strong spatial effect involved: both in the US and in Europe, you have initial clusters where the virus spread heavily, due to international travellers and workers bringing it in (Lombardy/NYC) and then the surrounding states/countries also being affected heavily.

The real aberrations are the US West Coast and the UK.
The West Coast was at large risk due to its high share of residents of Chinese origin and early cases, but got it under control by acting swiftly and decisively. As much as I like to make jokes about California as a "liberal hellhole", they have nailed the response here. With a large population and very dense agglomerations, Cali was at risk of becoming a 2nd New York. They didnt, and they/their governor deserve a lot of credit for that.

In Europe, the epicenter of the outbreak has been Lombardy province in Northern Italy, where you have a ton of Chinese factories with Chinese workers producing stuff (which in the end gets the label "Made in Italy" slapped on), from where it spread around Europe, in particular to the countries which have a high degree of everyday contact and travelers with Italy, namely France and Spain. (And it presumably spread from France to Belgium). In Europe, the higher North and East you go, the better the mortality. The big exception, however, is the UK, which was in a position to quell the virus, but instead decided to do nothing and let it spread for several weeks until it was too late.

See here:
https://ig.ft.com/autograph/graphics/coronavirus-map-europe.svg

and here:
https://ig.ft.com/autograph/graphics/coronavirus-map-united-states.svg

"We're gonna build a screen across the whole West Coast to keep the Gggginese killer bee out. It will reach to the space. It will be a huge and beautiful screen. So huge. Believe me."

This is the best explanation and visualization of covid-19, it's dynamics and all the available strategies that I have seen so far, HIGHLY recommended to give it a look:

https://ncase.me/covid-19/

The preprint problem: Unvetted science is fueling COVID-19 misinformation

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/a-lot-of-covid-19-papers-havent-been-peer-reviewed-reader-beware/




Not agreeing or disagreeing with your graph games. I brought this up about a week ago. This is currently running rampant in our society.
I usually refer to this as the publish or perish problem, for lack of a better name. I like the term "preprint". It seems more to the point.

Just saw this article today, thought I'd post it here for perusal.

We've already established you have no idea what "publish or perish" means. Just so you know, it's the term given to the situation of new academic researchers or researchers at very prestigious research institutions. They have to publish frequently or they will get sacked. This is a problem exclusive to professors at academic institutions publishing in peer reviewed journals.

The issue they are talking about, where the R0 estimates were based on preprint papers early in the pandemic, is dumb. You won't have good data on which to base estimates of infectivity for a brand new virus for months at minimum, so basing your policy decisions on preprint data isn't just appropriate, it's literally the only option you have.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on May 6 2020 11:02pm

I would phrase it slightly different: "basing your policy decisions on preprint data and awareness about their tremendous uncertainty is the only option you have".

In a situation like this, the uncertainty should be at least as much of a factor for decision making as the preliminary data itself.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 6 2020 11:13pm

Yeah, it's almost like we could call that... "publish or perish". FYI, I knew what publish or perish meant when you were still in diapers.

As for the article itself, they are referring to misinformation in the common sector. Aka, the misinformation that the modern day internet sometimes generates. But I'm sure you were aware of that.




/e Circulating unvetted papers among the scientific community is fine. Circulating preprint articles among the public, is not only disingenuous, it's irresponsible.

This post was edited by Ghot on May 6 2020 11:16pm