Evidence for rapid action to control an epidemic at its earliest stages comes from the neighbouring states of Tennessee and Kentucky in the USA. Stephanie Jolly in Kentucky plotted the chart from data on the official state departments of health websites. As reported by Dan Vergano on BuzzFeed News the data suggests that the earlier actions by Kentucky authorities succeeded in “flattening the curve”. Vergano correctly points out that many factors enter into these kinds of comparisons: exact date of initial outbreak, differences in urban-rural populations in the extent of compliance, and other uncontrolled factors in such “natural” experiments. But taken together with the data from countries like South Korea and Taiwan, which acted quickly and used the Three T’s approach it becomes increasingly convincing.
This forms part of a continuing series of posts on Coronavirus: A Blind Strategy, Walking to Danger, The Three T’s, To Mask or not to Mask?
