Across the country, as governors and local leaderswith the Trump administration’s response, the most valuable information about what measures are most effective will come from watching which states are able to bend the curve the fastest. For all the attendant chaos of federalism, there’s something to be said for running 51 experiments and seeing which produce the best results.
For states that saw a significant rise in cases later than others, the national growth pattern or similar states that developed cases earlier can offer one possible roadmap for what to expect. Pennsylvania, for example, lags behind national figures by three days but tracks with them very precisely, giving officials there a real-world projection for the coming days that so far has proved extremely accurate.
It’s the nature of averages that some states would track above the national trend and some would track below. But there’s still something to be gleaned from the differences in how states are currently trending.