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When the coronavirus first broke out in Sioux Falls, SD, in the spring, Mayor Paul TenHaken arrived at work each morning with a clear mission: to stop the outbreak at the pork factory. Hundreds of employees, cutting meat side by side, had fallen ill in what was then the largest cluster of viruses in the United States.
This epidemic was extinguished months ago, and these days when he goes to City Hall it’s a lot more nebulous. The virus has spread throughout the city.
“You can swing a cat and hit someone who caught it,” said TenHaken, who had to postpone his own meetings at Zoom last week after his assistant tested positive for the virus.
As the coronavirus spreads across the country, charting the path for the pandemic in the United States is no longer simply a challenge. It has become almost impossible.
Gone are the days when Americans could easily figure out the virus by following the growing number of cases to covert sources – the crowded factory, the struggling nursing home, the noisy bar. Now, there are so many cases, in so many places, that many people come to a frightening conclusion: they have no idea where the virus is spreading.
“It’s just all over the place,” said Crystal Watson, senior researcher at the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who has found that tracking coronavirus cases becomes difficult once the virus breaks down. spread to more than 10 cases per 100,000 people.
In some of the hardest-hit places in the United States, the virus is spreading at 10 to 20 times that rate, and even health officials have all but given up on trying to find out who is transmitting the virus to whom.
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