Men in protective gear arrive to disinfect a construction site on 42nd St., Friday, March 20, 2020, in New York. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is ordering all workers in non-essential businesses to stay home and banning gatherings statewide. “Only essential businesses can have workers commuting to the job or on the job,” Cuomo said of an executive order he will sign Friday. Nonessential gatherings of individuals of any size or for any reason are canceled or postponed. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Alec MacGillis writes for Pro Publica. He used to write for the New Republic, the Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun.

Washington Examiner’s Byron York pointed to some interesting points from MacGillis about the nature of the “national pandemic” which we are facing.

Talk of a "national pandemic" is obscuring how wildly disparate the toll is.

NYC is over 1,500 deaths. Detroit is near 200, NOLA at 125.

Meanwhile, Philly has 13, DC has 15, Denver has 11. All these and many more are below 10: SF, Balt, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Austin, Cincy…

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) April 3, 2020

Now while those numbers are old and have changed, the point he’s trying to make about the regional differences are valid and important to note: that the national pandemic isn’t the same across the country.

Yes, it’s early days and other cities may catch up yet. But the shutdowns may in fact have gone into place in time for a lot of them to be largely spared. And we may well end up with a few cities having borne insanely more pain and loss than others.

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) April 3, 2020

To drive home this regional disparity further: there are now far more confirmed cases in Paterson NJ, population 149K, than in all of Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus), population 1.3 million. Harrowing story of day in life of Paterson EMTs: https://t.co/m6yD3AVNhi

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) April 4, 2020

And the disparities are even greater if one uses metro-area figures. Take Detroit. It's not just the city. Suburban Oakland and Macomb counties have been hammered too. Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne counties are now at 424 deaths combined. Way, way beyond most other metro areas.

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) April 4, 2020

I'm getting responses of "it's bad everywhere, it's just not being tested, it's being covered up." On what evidence? If you doubt data, use most basic metric: hospitals not being overwhelmed as in NY, Detroit, etc. Bottom line: most are being spared the hell they are going thru.

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) April 4, 2020

There’s no doubting that there is that disparity at this point, although that may change. New York and Washington for example may have gotten cases earlier. But at this point his basic point is true. The top four states are New York, New Jersey, California and Michigan.

Now while some on the left are arguing that this is because “they aren’t testing,” first of all, that isn’t true but second you still have the basic measures of the hospitalizations and deaths. Even if you weren’t testing that doesn’t stop people from going to the hospital or dying. So it may mean that “stay at home” orders came fast enough to help those areas and/or they are not as affected by infected transmittal/population density/public transportation/public events as perhaps New York City was. This may explain for example things like Texas, which has 6359 cases and 111 deaths, while New York is at 114,775 cases and 3565 deaths. You can check out more at Worldometers and Covid Tracking also covers numbers as to state breakdowns and hospitalizations.

So we’ll have to see how it develops, if the rest of the country was able to head it off the huge impact those states at the top of the list are currently feeling. But it may be that the various regional differences, social distancing and stay at home guidelines may have benefited areas like Texas and others even further down the list in terms of cases and deaths.