Eight Renegade States Have No Statewide Lockdowns

While 95% of the US is locked down now, and the President is pushing the governors to make plans to re-open their states for business, eight states have yet to institute a statewide lockdown or closure of non-essential businesses and stay-at-home order.  These states are all infected and may experience uncontrollable outbreaks in the near future.  All of them have made some efforts to mitigate the pandemic and three of these states (highlighted in pink in the table below) have partial lockdowns for certain cities and counties within their state imposed by local governments that help to mitigate their risk.  But unless they take quick and decisive action to lockdown their state in full they will continue to expose their residents to unnecessary deaths and expose the entire country to re-infection even as the US daily confirmed case count appears to be topping out. 

Six out of the eight states (top 6 out of 8 rows in the table above) are seriously infected already and will have to institute state-wide lockdowns to control the spread.  Two of these, South Dakota (SD) and Iowa (IA) may suffer very badly before they gain control of their outbreaks.  No other state has ever let their infections get as bad as SD before imposing state-wide lockdown and only one state, New York (NY), locked down after where IA is today, and no one wants to follow in the footsteps of the tragedy in NY.  Our forecast for SD and IA is that before it all ends this year more than 1% of their population will be infected and more than 400 per million of their citizens will die.  Relying on good behavior and herd immunity does not work as evidenced by Sweden, and we urge the legislators and citizens in these states to warn their governors to act before it is too late for them and for the rest of the country.