Listen: Why the Virus Is Spreading So Unevenly
The nation’s attention has turned to the protests, but the coronavirus hasn’t gone away. In fact, the decline in hot spots such as New York may hide a growing problem elsewhere—a problem whose path has been disconcertingly random.
Staff writer Alexis Madrigal tracks coronavirus data with the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. He joins hosts James Hamblin and Katherine Wells on the podcast Social Distance to give an update on the state of the virus in the United States.
Listen to the episode here:
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What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of their conversation.
Katherine Wells: You just wrote a piece with the headline: America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic. Are you giving up?
No, I would say I’m settling in because it feels like, institutionally, we’re not going to go anywhere close to suppression. The experience of this for me is, every day, we finish these, and I think to myself, . And just for weeks and weeks now, you see over 20,000 new confirmed cases on average every day. And it’s just not going away.
