I keep coming back to this tale of two cities: New York and Madrid both had terrible starts to the pandemic, both brought it under control, but then Madrid lost it while New York didn't; it's both encouraging and worrying 1/ https://twitter.com/_MiguelHernan/status/1304424019450630144

New York's success story really is impressive. Positivity rates consistently below 1%; it's probably the safest place in America right now. 2/

What the NY story tells us, among other things, is to ignore facile generalizations about how American culture made us unable to cope with Covid-19. After initial stumbles, NY not only made the right sacrifices but developed social-distancing norms that have worked 3/

Spain seems to have made the cardinal error of rushing to reopen bars and indoor dining, while also failing to invest enough in contact tracing. Basically the same errors that led to the Sunbelt surge in the US 4/

So two lessons: this thing can be managed — in both Europe and America — but you have to stick with it or progress can vanish very fast. Did I mention that Florida — with 13.5% positivity! — is reopening its bars Monday? 5/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-florida-bars-reopen/

PS: Over the past 7 days the average daily death toll in NY was 5; in FL it was 108 6/ https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/all-metrics-per-state