Coronavirus Predictions for States Without Stay-at-Home Orders

We examine the population and Coronavirus Predictions for States Without Stay-at-Home Orders.  President Trump invoked the Constitution as a reason that he could not order all states to adopt such a policy.  He did not cite which section or principal prohibited him for doing this, in a national emergency and being on a war footing.  Granted, there is a lot of spare space in these states, but there is in most states.

Update on April 7:  We follow the New York Times classification.  Dr. Fauci says that Nebraska and Iowa have the equivalent of stay-at-home orders, and this is noted by stars* in the table.  Oklahoma has called for the elderly and vulnerable to stay at home.  But people live in families, and this will not end the spread unless the elderly and vulnerable isolate themselves.  The peaking dates and predicted deaths have also been updated, as well as the sums of these states.

We order the seven states by Population in millions, population in millions under such orders in Cities or Counties in the state, IHME predicted date of Peaking, and the number of Predicted Deaths.

State Population City or County Population Peaking Date Predicted Deaths
Oklahoma 3.95 m 1.32 m 4/22 813
Utah 3.28 m 1.6 m 4/25 186
Iowa* 3.18 m 0 4/26 420
Arkansas 3.04 m 0 4/24 297
Nebraska* 1.95 m 0 4/24 459
S. Dakota 0.88 m 0 4/25 178
N. Dakota 0.76 m 0 4/17 677
Wyoming 0.57 m 0.01 m 4/29 119

The total population in these states is 17.61 million.  Leaving out the effective stay-at-home Nebraska and Iowa, it is down to 12.48 million.  The City or County populations in them with stay-at-home restrictions is 2.93 million.  This leaves 14.68 million without safe-at-home restrictions, or 9.55 million without safe-at-home restrictions in the non-starred states..  The sum of expected deaths in these states is 3,149 or about half of the first numbers.  In the non-starred states, the number of deaths is   2,270.  Out of the US total population of 330 million, the uncovered population In the six unstarred states is 3.8%.  So 96% of the US population is covered.

Seven of these eight states have expected peaks at 11 days or less than when the sum of the United States is expected to peak on April 15, and are among the Second Wave to hit us.  Will their peaks be moved earlier if they had restrictions?  I don’t know.

This is a serious Catch-22 for the President.  The relatively few deaths projected here and in all IHME projections are based on that ALL States start immediately on the stay-at-home protocol.  There is no second wave in their projections.  But yet, these rogue states, could cause the Second Wave and drive up all death figures and the length of the protocols.  This happened to several states in the 1918 Flu Pandemic.  Trump has ranted throughout the news conferences about how he wants the US to start back up soon, yet his own inaction will not make that possible.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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