How, then, has California in the third month of known COVID-19 infections in the U.S. lost between 140 and 150 lives to it?
Only 3 or 4 deaths per million
Is there a lag in ascertaining and determining deaths in a state that’s geographically huge and linguistically diverse, a lapse that will shortly cease, correcting such misimpressions with a radical increase in corona-associated deaths — as is now forecast for Japan and to a lesser extent Germany?
Did California’s Draconian shelter-in-place policies that antedated many of those in other states simply arrest (so far) what should have been by now a lethal epidemic?
Did California’s proverbial warmer weather slow down the virus? Did its suburban ranch-home lifestyle and the large open spaces in the Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, desert and northern counties make transmissions harder than it has been in, say, the high-density living of New York City?
Maybe and maybe not.
While testing tardiness might explain outliers in terms of California’s relatively small number of proven cases and lethality rates, it would not greatly affect accurate statistics of deaths attributed to the virus. If anything, as the number of known cases grows, the lower the lethality rate will likely appear.
(from national review)
