Some States Moved Quickly, But New York Didn’t - When to Call Shelter in Place?

I live in Bay Area in California and I’ve been sheltered in place for more than 2 weeks now since 3/17. It was originally through 4/7, but now it’s extended through the end of April.

As much as it makes our daily life inconvenient and hurts our businesses, but what is more important than slowing down the curves of the infection and saving the lives that could be saved if we don’t overwhelm the medical infrastructure?

Now, here is one of the many questions I’ve had about the shelter-in-place.

How does each state mandate the shelter-in-place?

In the United States, this is not mandated by the federal government or the president. The order comes from the government in each state, though here in Bay Area we had the ‘shelter-in-place’ ahead of the state level order.

So there are some states that practice the ‘shleter-in-place’ but some states don’t.

How do they decide? Does it correlate with the number of infected cases? Another word, do the state government order the shelter-in-place when they see the number of cases increases?

To answer this question, I just saw Julia Raifman posted the following tweet yesterday.

One of the state policies is the shelter-in-place!

So I grabbed the data and see the relationship by combining with the COVID19 infected cases data by the New York Times.

A long story short, I don’t see much correlation there. But instead, what I found is the indecisiveness of the New York state government, which is very troubling given what we are seeing in New York.

Anyway, here it is.

Shelter-in-place in Practice or Not with Map

Here’s a U.S. state level map that shows the states that mandate ‘Shelter-in-place’ (Red) and the states that don’t (Gray). (as of 4/2/2020)

And here is another map that shows the states with more than 1,000 reported infected cases (Red) and the states with less (Gray).

It’s not clear if there is any correlation between the two maps. What I was looking for is a similar pattern. I was expecting the states with more infected cases are practicing the shelter-in-place and the states with fewer cases are otherwise. But that’s not what I’m seeing here.

A map is not necessarily a great visualization tool to find such correlation anyway, so let’s visualize the relationship with Bar chart.

Shelter-in-place in Practice or Not with Bar Chart

This bar chart is showing the number of infected cases for each state and comparing them by the length of the bars.

And I’m not seeing a clear trend. I was expecting the states with more cases are red and the states with less cases are gray, but that’s not necessarily the case.

How Many Cases Already Found As Of Sheter-In-Place Order

So, how many infected cases were reported by the time each of the states ordered the shelter-in-place then?

This is a chart that it is hard to see. By the time the state ordered the shelter-in-place, New York has already more than 15,000 cases!

One thing to note though, the increase of the cases is not linear, it’s rather exponential. So it’s not like they had enough time to make that call with a lot of uncertainty and conflicting needs.

This is how the increase in the cases for New York.

Then, what point of the curve each state made the call of ordering shelter-in-place?

What point of the curve did each state made that call?

This is a chart that shows exactly that.

I’m showing only the top 20 states based on the number of infected cases.

You can see how late on the curve New York made that call. Why couldn’t they act a bit quicker?

How many days does it take after 100th cases?

This chart shows the number of days it took to order the shelter-in-place after the 100th of the infected case. It doesn’t include the states that still haven’t made the order.

Most of the states ordered the shelter-in-place after a week or two after the 100th case, though some states moved very quickly before they even saw the number increased.

Just to be fair, just having 100 cases of the infected is not like a big signal, especially big states like New York, California, etc.

Then, when do the government should see the signal of the increase?

How many days does it take after 1000th cases?

And here is how many days after 1000th case.

Even after 1,000 cases, New York and Pennsylvania took about a week before they ordered the shelter-in-place.

Final Thought

In the end, one thing I’m still not clear is that states like New York and Pennsylvania saw other states already did the shelter-in-place.

Sure, you could wonder the effect of the shelter-in-place, I wonder about that, too, but this is not a time to wonder if you work at the executive office especially after seeing that things could go dramatically and rapidly bad in Europe.

A part of the reason why New York was late on ordering the shelter-in-place was the governments there (including the state and the city) were completely underestimating the effect of this virus.

Here’s the mayor of New York City on March 2nd asking the citizens to get out and go see movies at the crowded theater, instead of asking to stay home or work remote.

Just put in perspective, a shutdown of school started on March 2nd in Japan when they had only 6 people died and 39 people infected. Here’s the world status on the school closure on March 2nd.

// This is from this UNESCO website page.

Being reactive or proactive makes a big difference. And we deserve to have a proactive leader especially when facing this type of situation.