Concerning Rhode Island's statement that they have only 200 cases vs. New York's 50000.
Suppose we want to find out how many women live in our state (population, say, 50 million people). We develop a test to check someone's gender and then crunch the numbers.
Week 1: 10 tests, 5 women.
Week 2: 20 tests, 11 women.
Week 3: 40 tests, 23 women.
Week 4: 100 tests, 55 women.
So, the conclusion is that in our state the number of women increases exponentially. It seems to more than double every week!
Of course, the truth is that there are actually about 25 million women living in our state and their number doesn't increase very much at all. It's just that we previously weren't able to find them and now the exponentially increasing test rate allows us to discover more and more of them every week. But we're still so far from the true number that the entire exercise is moot.
I have this example from German virologist Carsten Scheller. It shows us that it is insane of Rhode Island or anyone else to justify their measures with the number of infections (positive tests).
The correct justification would be: there are few people living here. Let's not import many, because our resources are tailored to us few plus one or two guests. But if our hospitals have capacity, we would gladly take the sick from other areas, where they can't be treated. But for the healthy people, please stay where you belong.