What Actions Have State & Local Authorities Taken to Slow Down the COVID epidemic?

In most countries, the response to COVID-19 has been dictated by the federal government, even if the actions taken were localized. The US response (through some combination of political philosophy and federal incompetence) has largely been left to the states, with federal organizations primarily providing "guidelines". This has made it difficult to track

Fortunately Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the FDA, has been tracking the containment and mitigation measures that are being put into place. You can find a list of each measure here. The website is regularly updated, and news is regularly blasted out on the associated Twitter account, @https://twitter.com/COVID2019action. If you are looking for information specific to your area, I recommend you look at the above link in addition to the website of your local public health department. Obviously the CDC has important information as well, but Dr. Gottlieb's site is the only place I've found with a comprehensive list of local actions taken.

Have you found other useful resources? Please let me know in the comments.

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Why Is Oregon Still on Lockdown?

A blog post gaining traction in Oregon was brought to my attention. The post makes some dangerous claims, and argues that Oregon should be reopened. I understand the desire to reopen as soon as possible, but the claims made in the post are wrong and dangerous - read below to understand why. Where are we in the cycle of the disease? "Professor Hinkley", the author of the post (I'm not providing a link because I don't want to spread false information) claims that the number of hospitalizations from COVID-19 began decreasing before the lockdown began. To support his claim, he annotates a graph published by the Oregon Health Authority on April 5th : OHA COVID-19 Graph annotated by Hinkley The biggest problem with Hinkley's analysis is the annotation he wrote over in his graph (and I have circled below): as of April 4th, illnesses between 3/25 and 4/4 may not be reported yet. Hinkley says the number of cases started to decline even before Oregon i

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There are a few different types of tests for COVID-19. Currently the most common is a PCR test, which detects genetic material from the virus. PCR tests are great because they are highly specific - they have a very low rate of false positives. If the test is positive, you can be certain you have COVID-19. But the test only works on patients who are sick and still have the virus in their body. What if you want to know if someone had COVID-19 in the past? That's where antibody tests (also known as serology) comes in. For more details, keep reading.

How Many COVID-19 Tests Can The USA Run Each Day?

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