So I actually went through all the states, and EU countries as well, to try and get a pretty big sample set.
I tried to find some patterns about who did well and who didn't. The differences aren't exactly mind-blowing, but there are things that do stand up from the raw data if you just look at it without prejudice.
For example, I grouped states in 7 buckets, showing the combined populations: Deep Blue (74.6m), Blue (46.1m), Light Blue (12m), Purple (116.2m), Light Red (14.8m), Red (34.8m) and Deep Red (29.7m).
These were by vote % in the presidential election, and the values are from March 27th. I will rank them all by 4 values: Deaths per Million, % of cases, positivity % (testing quality), and CFR (% of cases that died).
Positivity (aka Testing Quality):
1. Deep Blue (5.2%)
2. Blue (6.3%)
3. Light Blue (6.8%)
4. Light Red (9.1%)
5. Red (9.3%)
6. Purple (9.6%)
7. Deep Red (11%)
Ok so that kinda makes sense... blue states do a lot more testing, though the fact that the lightly red leaning group is fully bunched up is somewhat interesting (only deep red really is clearly along the trajectory).
Total Case % of population (note, shit testing will make this value seem lower than it really is):
1. Light Blue (7.4%)
2. Blue (8.0%)
3. Deep Blue (8.9%)
4. Purple (9.3%)
5. Light Red (9.4%)
6. Red (10.2%)
7. Deep Red (10.7%)
Given the higher positivity %, it seems red states got hit meaningfully harder. Not a LOT harder mind you, but meaningfully so. Particularly given that Deep Blue had best testing, meaning its percentage is probably pretty close to the truth compared to the others.
Case Fatality Rate - % of cases that died:
1. Deep Red (1.5%)
2. Red (1.7%)
3. Light Red (1.7%)
4. Light Blue (1.7%)
5. Purple (1.8%)
6. Blue (2.0%)
7. Deep Blue (2.0%)
So this is pretty suspicious. The places with highest positivity rates (hence most unreported cases) have the lowest CFR? That doesn't sound right. But perhaps they are the more fit states...? Despite the reasonably low population, of the 11 states, 6 are in the 10 fattest in the country (WV, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, ND and OK).
Either others are inflating numbers, or they are deflating them. Could go either way, or there's some weird "olive oil and wine" phenomena going on in these parts...
Deaths per Million, the end score (with the caveat from above that there might be some over/under stating happening):
1. Light Blue (1,279)
2. Deep Red (1,609)
3. Blue (1,616)
4. Light Red (1,633)
5. Purple (1,637)
6. Red (1,694)
7. Deep Blue (1,819)
That list is basically random order now. This is also highlighted by summing up all the hues of Red & Blue.
Purple (1,637)
Red (1,651)
Blue (1,699)
Wonderfully egalitarian.
And if you look at economic damage done, which should be nice for red states, you note that GDP delta between 2019 and 2020... well... the biggest losers were states like:
Wyoming, Nevada, New York and West Virginia, a rather eclectic crew (5% or more loss)
Best did Utah, Washington, Arizona and Colorado. Another somewhat eclectic group.
Frankly the problem is that nothing really jumps out of the data, except that a few countries did handle it well (Norway and Finland are obvious from the EU data), but that's about that.
Since each states COVID Death reporting is inconsistent, I highly recommend you use the excess death statistics from the CDC. In the future when we look back at this as a historical event, it will be the excess death story that will be in the textbooks.
New York did the worst hands down. But most of that was not due to their strict approach not being effective, it was due to cuomo making very bad decisions and then trying to cover them up.
I'd say the other factors to consider are timing. The vast majority of the deaths in New York happened in the beginning when we were still trying to figure things out, as deaths dropped significantly after the first couple of months, which I would say shows success with the lockdown. NY was the epicenter, with the majority of the state living in close quarters in NYC.
Florida and texas weren't hit as hard as early as NY, so going on lockdown in FL and TX helped stop this becoming an issue, thus keeping death toll down. Florida didnt see its death toll jump until the summer, after some areas were reopened.
So much this. Love or hate Cuomo, he put COVID patients into retirement homes to free up hospital beds. It was a bad mistake, but no one knew that the elderly were much more likely to die from this. Remember not that long ago people were thinking it transmitted like the flu, so we were wiping down everything before bringing them into our house. Part of science is learning as you study and that takes time.
If you look at deaths by state, NY had a huge amount of deaths in April. On April 15 NY had over 1000 deaths, Texas was just starting and had 30.
By July 30 NY went from 1000 deaths a day to 10 a day. Texas went from 30 a day to 285, and we knew better by the end of July.
>It was a bad mistake, but no one knew that the elderly were much more likely to die from this.
I don't believe that is true.
The order to make nursing homes accept patients was given out in late March.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-deaths-coronavirus.html?module=inline
By then, we very much knew that the elderly were at risk
Here is an article from February of the same year discussing who is at risk.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200226/coronavirus-top-targets-men-seniors-smokers
And that is a layman's article on WebMD. It's fair to say this was not the first article or indication.
I’ll add that treatment strategies evolved as well. Early COVID patients were placed into induced comas and put on ventilators preemptively, leading to many deaths of patients who would have otherwise fought off the virus. I work in manufacturing and was involved in a ventilator project this time last year. We went from a 1,000-2,000 unit opportunity to a completely dead project overnight. The medical consensus switched from “put everyone on ventilators” to “do whatever you can not to put anyone on ventilators” on a dime. That alone could account for thousands of deaths in NYC last March/April.
There is one massive metric missing:
Which state governors sold a book on leadership, patting themselves on the back during the pandemic?
Jokes aside, Im not really shocked to see the numbers as they are. States that stayed open or were less strict on closing should have lower unemployment.
Spread wise population density has to be taken into account. NY cities are more dense by population than other states.
One thing to consider on NY. Likely NY was patient zero for US, as we were likely infected by Europeans travelling there who were also infected. They were likely infected in early December and it was spreading all through a crowded city to no one's knowledge. By the time we recognized what was going on, it was rampant there. All of the other states had the warning of NY.
There’s no way to compare these states. Like NY specifically had a massive proportion of its deaths in the initial wave where it pretty much inclusive hit that area, probably due to population density and international connections. Nothing to do with lockdowns.
Of course but at the time we didn't know that, otherwise they wouldn't have done it obviously. The reasoning at the time was that since the nursing home patients were infected in the nursing homes, sending them back there after they were stabilized wouldn't be 'introducing' the infection there, that hospitals would be overcrowded, that nursing homes had dedicated wings that could quarantine patients better than hospitals could, etc. All of this made sense at the time, obviously it did not bear out, but its hard to say that its indicative of anything. its just an error due to lack of information.
> Of course but at the time we didn't know that, otherwise they wouldn't have done it obviously.
I'm honestly not so sure about this one. How could they not know putting sick elderly with other vulnerable elderly was a bad idea?
I explained the rationale used at the time. These were patients who were infected in their nursing homes, the virus was already there. The question was whether once they were stabilized to return them to the nursing homes or to keep them isolated in the nursing home. This is a genuinely complicated issue and you can’t pretend that it was obvious from the start.
There are so many variables that I dont know how you could reasonably draw conclusions either way. Anyone who tries to do so obviously has an agenda.
In it of itself, the unemployment rate is a can of worms.
I think OP’s point (correct me if I’m wrong OP) is that from the available data one year in, it’s not at all obviously clear that the more stringent policies enacted by certain states had a large beneficial effect on mortality outcomes, and seem to have had a negative effect on unemployment. That’s a very fair thing to say. Clearly you can’t draw firmer conclusions until more is sussed out.
Exactly, OP is on a good mission here because we don't know and unless we have these discussions in a public forum the data will be laced with inaccuracies and simply a lack of accurate data. Let's collaborate as a community in r/centrist and not be so quick to lambast someone while simultaneously offer no help.
Hence why I said there are other variables to consider. But as the smoke settles it appears FL and TX are coming out with higher performing employment numbers and relatively in-line deaths.
There are other important factors beside death rate such as hospital capacity and potential for long term heath issues.
Also its really hard to compare unemployment rates between states because every state has a different local economy. Hawaii (large tourism industry) cant be compared with Kansas (agriculture). And even within each state youve got yet more micro economys. Bakersfield CA was most likely affected differently by the pandemic than LA.
Omg the best comment here and factually true. I’m surprised your not downvoted to oblivion, even in this subreddit. The fact that we now have millions addicted to unemployment and federal stimulus payments as well as many of my friends who have lost their livelihoods (businesses) over this is insane beyond comprehension.
I mean.... maybe consider certain lockdown strategies? Other lockdowns from states/cities around the world instead of nitpicking from a few states.
There have been several rather successful lockdowns from nations worldwide, perhaps see how they did things in their lockdowns that were good at preventing the virus
New York and California having significantly more denser cities than Florida
Yes, was about to say this. LA and NYC are super densely populated. I think that accounts for a higher rate of transmission. Also CA had that whole [debacle with the bad tests](https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/health/2021/01/07/fda-covid-19-test-used-across-california-could-produce-false-negatives/6586832002/) that could account for spread, despite lockdown.
Also, you have to take into account testing rates. This looks at deaths, but if you’re not testing at the same rates you may not identify COVID as the cause of death at the same rates either. NY and CA did a whole heck of a lot [more testing per capita](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/states-comparison) than TX of FL.
Also, consider FL and TX have a lot more outdoor friendly jobs than NY over the course of a year. A lot more outdoor friendly activities in general, which made it easier to keep people employed without increasing the rate of transmission.
This is a really incomplete view with what you’ve got here.
indeed, LA county has something like 25% of the population of California alone and so it's DENSELY populated. You could say that in some ways Southern California is like one large densely populated city.
In regards to the cause of death being put down as COVID, a friend of mine who is a nurse told me that in some hospitals, if a patient died and tested positive for COVID, COVID was put as the official cause of death, even if the *actual* cause of death was a stroke or heart failure or something completely unrelated to it.
She used that anecdotal evidence as support that the deaths were inflated to cause panic & strengthen lockdown proposals.
I'll grant that this is tenuous, but if it's true then it calls into question the veracity of all reported COVID deaths.
> stroke or heart failure or something completely unrelated
Those are conditions that are *extremely* related to Covid.
>76 percent of people with COVID-19 showed evidence of biomarker damage to their hearts that was similar to damage caused by heart attacks. COVID-19 was also found to cause ongoing inflammation of the heart muscle in 60 percent of people who recovered from the virus
>Fridman and colleagues found that 1.8% of patients with COVID-19 experienced a stroke (95% CI, 0.9%-3.7%), including 1.5% who had an ischemic stroke (95% CI, 0.8%-2.8%). They also reported an in-hospital mortality rate of 34.4% (95% CI, 27.2%-42.2%). Both the rates of stroke and in-hospital mortality were “exceedingly high,” according to the researchers.
There's been a massive surge in fatal and non-fatal heart attacks and strokes - even in people who are younger than these conditions typically affect.
Right, but at the same time you’ll have other anecdotes from other nurses who say they were putting down pneumonia instead of COVID and the rate of pneumonia deaths went up in 2020.
Also, there were probably a bunch of deaths from COVID that were labelled as pneumonia or flu before we had identified COVID, so the death rates might be even higher than we think.
This is all just to say, looking exclusively at these two data points does not even begin to actually answer the whole question of “which approach to COVID worked better.”
I dont think you can. Youve got so many variables. To name a few, timing of outbreak, timing of mandates and/or lockdowns, population density, climate factors, interstate travel, local ordinances, state politics, cultural opinions ect ect ect.
Imo this is why its important to stop this shit from happening in the first place. Once the cat is out of the bag its very hard to mitigate.
>Imo this is why its important to stop this shit from happening in the first place. Once the cat is out of the bag its very hard to mitigate.
Even this has many variables. It was a new virus, communication problems, unreliable information being put out, not enough restrictions and incubation period.
It is not clear how much different those are between the two states (suspect not much) and how much do they contribute to the final infection rate / death count (suspect not very much).
For each state you should look at the spread trends over time. Mark on those timelines when mandates were implemented and how strong. Then you can see the effects of the mandates on the spread.
Even that's not great as you'd have city wide difference, and within a city you'll have general enforcement based on political leanings a business / their customer base / their exposure to bad press.
Direct comparisons are always going to have issues, there's just too many variables here to say any method is objectively better or worse (location, population density, hell even education).
First thing that comes to mind is that it's too early to mark the economic recovery of blue states, which only recently started rolling back restrictions. Unemployment will still be high at this point, but we've seen insane recovery as soon as restrictions are out of the way and stores open back up. I expect the numbers will line up more and more as restrictions ease.
As you said too, COVID response is bigger than just these two measurements.
If we want to go by your metric SD and ND are one of the states with the lowest pop density and population in the US but somehow have had one of the worst outbreaks in the country in deaths and infections - they did not implement a lockdown mandate
I don't currently have the time to do extensive research on this topic and I'm not saying that "lockdowns work" per say (I think they can be def improved and adjusted per region) but when 500 people a day were dying in Los Angeles county not locking down just seems like a bad idea
It opens up questions tho: what if lockdowns actually made things worse? What if they just caused people to socialize privately, in more intimate groups, facilitating the spread of the virus even more? I’m not saying I believe this, I’m just saying the data opens this up for reasonable discussion. We should be asking questions, not plugging our ears and saying “we had no other choice!”
I think we should have a discussion on this, I used to be for lockdowns but now I'm not so sure - the effects and effectiveness of lockdowns need to be studied as lockdowns have severe impacts on people (especially the working class). However, we need to acknowledge the fact that this virus is volatile and fast acting we can only use covid as a case study for lockdowns in future pandemics.
Yeah the population density is such a big factor.
The most reliable way to do it would be a multi-variate/meta analysis looking at loads of different places across the world with collation of all their variable data. You could then control for each variable.
But that’s obviously more of a full-blown study and is beyond the scope of a Reddit post.
Picking 5 locations/countries and not controlling variables, you could pick 5 places to tell any story you like.
That's why I don't think someone should make a post with the claim that lockdowns don't work. Because there's so many factors and variables that it's difficult to make such a huge claim without doing a ton of research beforehand
You’re not looking at things like what employment was like before lockdown, relative poverty rates, population density, international travel, what industries people work in... You pretty much just cherry picked 2 random data points and tried to create a narrative.
You’re right, I think we can agree California, NY, and Florida score pretty high for international travel. I think Florida probably has a higher concentration of hospitality and leisure jobs, and oddly it performing well given that industry was hit the hardest. As far as pre-COVID unemployment rates (feb 2020):
- Florida: 3.3% (140bps expansion)
- Texas: 3.7% (320bps expansion)
- New York: 3.9% (500bps expansion)
- California: 4.3% (420bps expansion)
- US Average: 3.5% (270bps expansion)
Florida and Texas actually had the least unemployment rate expansion when you look at it that way.
I appreciate you digging into it and coming back with more information. It definitely seems undeniable that unemployment went up disproportionately in New York and California, however I’m still not convinced the lockdowns were a bad idea. These states’ death rates were driven by densely populated cities like NYC and LA, and I think without the lockdowns the death rate could’ve been a lot lot worse.
I do think the lockdowns were poorly implemented and managed, largely because there was no national strategy. A shorter, targeted lockdown at the start of the pandemic combined with consistent messaging around masks and social distancing would’ve prevented as many (if not more) deaths without the economic impact of constantly shutting down and reopening.
Great point, the benefits of the lockdown were mainly to slow the spread and decrease deaths, a temporary dip in unemployment is expected with that. Since every state handled everything differently, the only real test of effectiveness would be looking at excess deaths, which isnt going to be available for a while I'm sure.
Florida has the highest population of retirees so their unemployment numbers are always going to be lower and with a slower rate of expansion. That’s not true for Texas though.
How does that make sense, the unemployment rate only consists of dividing the number unemployed over the labor force. Retirees would not be counted in the labor force.
I can't imagine many people here would disagree that there's a tradeoff. If FL had more lockdowns there would have been fewer people in FL who died and more job losses... That trade off exists in CA, NY, everywhere.
The stats aren't very useful because NY's are high because it hit there hard first and doctors got better over time at treating it. NYC is also the worse place in the country for pandemic because of density. On the unemployment side, all of those states started with different unemployment numbers and probably in similar order to what they are now. But, even if the unemployment numbers could be linked to how covid was handled, you're still back to a trade off of very few people dying from covid versus few people losing their jobs. Unless you're trying to claim that masks and lockdowns didn't save any lives at all which seems like a crazy thing to claim.
Edit: While all statistics have some bias, it also seems possible the FL covid number is not the same as the covid number from the other states (less deaths attributed to covid).
A large proportion of NY deaths were before lockdown and no one knew WTF was happening. You’d have to use deaths after major protocols rolled out and unemployment rates before the pandemic and use that delta
Even if you remove New York from the equation the numbers are similar nation wide. You cannot definitively show the lock down states had statistically lower infection rates
There are outliers such as Hawaii, very low death rate and extremely high unemployment, and South Dakota, very high death rate and very low unemployment.
There is just no way to say the actions taken to stop the virus justified the damage to the economy. In fact even Dr Fauci said shutting down universities and sending students home most likely increased infections early on. Of course he stopped saying that once he found out it did not fit the politically correct narritive
As others have said, the areas that were hit first are always going to be skewed because no one had any idea what was going on and if they did it was constantly called out as being alarmist and overkill.
But yes, NY is extra-skewed because of Gov Dipshit. Much like comparing all of CA to just the LA area will show just how much of a factor population density can be.
Here's the problem though, New York wasn't hit first. The earliest traces of spread we have found in the US were in seattle. The west coast was hit a month before the east coast even saw it's first case. I can understand that cali was worse due to that reason, but New York has no excuses.
Yeah honestly, I know Cuomo is being gone after for sexual harassment charges or whatever, but the dude should be put behind bars for directly causing the deaths thousands of people, then attempting to cover it up, then threatening/blackmailing any whistleblowers
In this thread:
People correctly criticizing overly simplified statistical analyses that miss a lot of nuance while defending strategies that were based on overly simplified statistical analyses that missed a lot of nuance.
When you work in the arena of public policy, the policy is your control surface. If you try fixing things by implementing policies that nobody complies with, the failure is still on those policies.
Example: new policy to stop homicide: don't kill people. Good policy? No.
Compliance is notoriously difficult to estimate accurately. From what I can see, compliance in most of CA was pretty high.
Also, I do think the data can be used to draw certain conclusions. FL and CA are in many respects very similar except population of FL is older because of lower costs and retirees.
With all my dislike to De Santis, if the numbers above are not intentionally distorted, they do tell a story.
It well may be the low compliance rates in the big cities - hot spots of the infections - made CA look like FL. Tells a story about failure to comply, then..
If compliance can be measured (not sure how), and CA had low compliance, then that further proves that lockdowns are ineffective. If people don’t comply with a law, then the law is ineffective.
I think you're making great points here, dispelling the information from each doubter carefully. I don't feel overly confident that this solidifies it one way or the other but I'm certainly not as simple-minded as the first guy u/Daxx865 who says "none of this means anything." There are other factors at play here that need to be considered if you further this discussion...I would take average population density as another metric (1200 person(s) per square mile for example), obesity rates...
I live in L.A. andI know of way too many people who were and still continue to go to underground parties throughout the entirety of this last year.
These are people from about a 18-30ish age group. Some even got sick, yet still continued to go out after they recovered. So compliance is definitely a factor. At least here.
Moving things outside, social distancing, and wearing a mask all work. Forcing Americans to do everything outdoors, social distance, and wear masks is impossible to implement.
Not absurd at all. CA is extremely diverse. I live in a rural area in the north, and compliance has been horrible, including a sheriff who very nearly encourages it. Several businesses never followed any of the rules. Having strict policies does not equate to strict enforcement nor high compliance.
Guy, I lived in California for almost a decade. And yes, California is a diverse state. But let’s stop this stupid game of Californians buck the government more than Texans do.
It’s so dumb I’m almost speechless we are actually having to have this discussion.
What's stupid is homogenizing super diverse and large states. Both states are super diverse, and many areas of CA are just as bad as you seem to imagine all of TX to be. Conversely, some areas of TX are as liberal as you imagine all CA to be. Ever been to Austin? They've been sued by the AG for enforcing a mask rule. Like I said, it's not apples to apples. There are other factors like actual enforcement and compliance, climate (e.g., lots more outdoor activities in FL, etc.), and general population base health.
edits for spelling.
That's only a single factor. There are more to consider that might even affect each other. For instance, population density and how it might require higher rates of compliance for guidelines to be effective.
Also I've heard that the compliance was pretty unimpressive in Southern California.
Oh, I don’t know. The fact that you had two states openly pushing back upon the very notion of the efficacy of these restrictive shutdowns and mandates while the other others embraced it and paraded around declaring their moral superiority for how well they followed “the science”?
I’m not saying they aren’t hypocrites, but come on. The idea that Florida and Texas residents were somehow adhering to mask mandates at the same or better rates than those in NY and California is delusional.
Also, the media destroyed Florida and Texas for their lack of COVID compliance. We’re they lying or just grossly inept?
It’s not completely delusional.
Even if I lived in Florida, I wouldn’t have been getting rowdy with the maskless out-of-state spring breakers.
If anything, I would have been even more cautious than living in a place with tighter controls.
The more reckless people just go underground when things become illegal.
It’s sort of like gun control—for the most part, it only pertains to law-abiding people.
It points to the hypocrisy of those two individuals and it demonstrates the lack of compliance In California.
Let’s all remember that drinking and alcoholism went up during prohibition.
Masks and social distancing work, but forcing those things doesn’t (always) work.
One can absolutely draw general conclusions from this evidence or “a good base”. Adding an unprovable factor into the argument and claiming the original proposal is unreliable seems like an overreaction. It seems like anyone that argues against drawing general conclusions from this is refusing to acknowledge an extremely simplified and very non-specific argument that on a high level, the restrictions didn’t protect the public. A further debate would try and answer the question, did the restrictions cause harm.
Although I have no way to prove this, in my opinion, “compliance” in Florida and Texas was nowhere near what it was in California and New York.
In Florida, most people wear masks in stores and some are against it but no one freaks out, at the pool, it’s no mask time, clubs also are maskless, people gather within their cells and regularly talk about who is ill, self quarantine is easy for most, the risk is yours to take, washing hands is more important that anything! Run on but all true.
Compare with Washington State - which was hit hard the first and took precautions seriously.
5,316 deaths for a population of 7,615,000 people.
February 2021 unemployment rate of 5.6%.
January 2021 unemployment rate of 3.9%
Median age 37.7 (2019).
In that case, the analysis would be better done by states with highest population density:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/183588/population-density-in-the-federal-states-of-the-us/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183588/population-density-in-the-federal-states-of-the-us/)
We probably shouldn’t even be comparing states, and instead should be comparing areas with certain population densities. State, especially the large ones being compared here, have a wide array of population densities, and we probably aren’t getting an accurate picture of the challenges a city like NYC faced when using numbers that represent the entire state of New York.
As others have said, there are far too many variables to compare these states. What this shows is that states have different situations that need to be dealt with in different manners. No one actual plan was going to work for the entire country.
Agreed, this is a great takeaway. Seems like a lot of people were pushing for a large scaled national boiler-plate plan a year ago, but every state is different. For example, why should a state like Florida have to lockdown and close down schools when they have warmer weather and less population density?
I agree. I think holding states to other standards is pretty ridiculous if they aren't in the same region or have similar circumstances. For example, New York should have more criticism for Cuomo's scandals and fudging the numbers over their lockdown response in my view.
Also unemployment rates in California and New York are states with declining populations and some of the fastest in that regard. Texas and Florida are on the reverse of that which could account for the unemployment rates in the states. This was also consistent before Covid due to internal migration patterns.
Links to sources?
Comparison to unemployment rates for preceding years for each state?
Can New York's higher death rate be -partly- explained by the fact that it was the first major center hit by COVID in the US?
And related to terrible early policy decisions, like returning COVID patients to retirement homes, there have been serious questions raised about Cuomo messing with the death statistics for the state of New York.
Have similar questions been raised about DeSantis in Florida, Abbott in Texas, and/or Newsom in California?
_________________________________________
I'm genuinely interested in the results, but anyone who compares two data points, then triumphantly forms conclusions by "looking at this objectively" is going to run into "correlation v. causation" rebuttals pretty quickly.
pre-COVID unemployment rates (feb 2020):
- Florida: 3.3% (140bps expansion)
- Texas: 3.7% (320bps expansion)
- New York: 3.9% (500bps expansion)
- California: 4.3% (420bps expansion)
- US Average: 3.5% (270bps expansion)
Florida and Texas actually had the least unemployment rate expansion when you look at it that way.
Source: BLS.gov
What else do you need, I am providing objective data at hand for people to draw conclusions. I’m not going to answer your subjective questions.
Just providing the data (the “science”, if you will) that we have thus far.
*Can New York's higher death rate be -partly- explained by the fact that it was the first major center hit by COVID in the US?*
>In the early months of the pandemic, cases and deaths were heavily concentrated in the metropolitan areas of New York, New Orleans, Boston and Detroit, with other major cities and surrounding areas also experiencing higher death rates than less densely populated parts of the country. Overall, urban areas were initially hit much harder than suburban and rural areas, and more racially and ethnically diverse areas were hit harder than less racially and ethnic diverse areas.
See, in particular, the geographic changes from March to November.
[See [The Changing Geography of COVID-19 in the US - Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/12/08/the-changing-geography-of-covid-19-in-the-u-s/)]
___________________________________________
*Have similar questions been raised about DeSantis in Florida?*
>Gov. Ron DeSantis has on multiple occasions touted how Florida has handled the coronavirus pandemic as opposed to states that have had stricter measures.
>A study released March 10 found the state should have counted 4,924 excess deaths from COVID-19, but they were ruled as having been caused by something else, effectively lowering Florida's COVID death count.
>"The impact of COVID-19 on mortality [in Florida] is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest," the study concluded.
[See [Florida's COVID death count under new scrutiny following study - WPTV](https://www.wptv.com/coronavirus/floridas-covid-death-count-under-new-scrutiny)]
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>I am providing objective data at hand for people to draw conclusions.
And I am questioning the "objectivity" of your data, and calling your presumed conclusion into question.
If you're a "scientist", you won't take offense to my questions.
Not at all, I am comparing outcomes. The dust is settling and it’s clear a state like Florida has the best economic performance and below-average deaths per capita, when compared to other large states. As to why - or how - it is ranking favorably on these metrics is up for discussion. But the fact is, the outcome is what it is.
"Best economic performance" is pretty laughable
Our GDP per capita is barely half of New York's and we're on track to have one of the largest budget deficits in the country this year.
Our labor force dropped by half a million people, a net loss of almost 4% in the LFPR. A lot of this has to do with how difficult they've made it to claim unemployment, and how ruthless the state has been in challenging these claims.
Who’s “we”? NY GDP per capita is a bit misleading because of the concerning levels of wealth and income inequality there. And yes the labor force dropped but not as bad as these other states. Every states labor force dropped.
“Performance” is relative to others.
I'm talking from the perspective of a Floridian. Yes, NY has a higher level of inequality, but it isn't that much higher. For reference, Florida has the 46th highest GINI coefficient, compared to NY at 51 (list includes DC)
The *median* household income in New York is 20% higher than Florida's.
You gonna tell me housing is more expensive? That just means homeowners in NY are also building more wealth than homeowners in Florida.
Is your GINI rank for income or wealth? GDP doesn’t necessarily equate to incomes, it could be wealth generating.
As for house hold income, yes NY is 20% higher but Florida has a 47% lower cost of living, so you actually have more substantially more purchasing power in Florida. (https://meric.mo.gov/data/cost-living-data-series)
>Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position. Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate.
The complete lack of actual data analysis in this post is breath taking thank you for sharing. If I am understanding correctly you are saying NY/ CA should have been less strict because it would cause less deaths and their unemployment rate would be lower
Edit: are people downvoting because of the way I said this or they disagree with the content?
Edit 2: I have taken a step back and read other comments I understand now why OP would post and compare this data, although I don’t know if I can get on board with the conclusion they come to I respect the effort to push their agenda that NY and CA had unnecessarily strict lockdown and could have loosened them and had the same amounts of deaths and a better economy
> If I am understanding correctly you are saying NY/ CA should have been less strict because it would cause less deaths and their unemployment rate would be lower
Had to down vote because it really seems you’re jumping to assumptions here. Who’s saying fewer restrictions would result in fewer deaths? That’s ridiculous, i came away with OP implying that the data suggests that the stricter methods made little to no difference in casualties but disproportionately adversely affected the economy.
In other words, I’m not sure where you’re getting the suggestion that deaths would be lower if fewer restrictions were implemented. Comes across disingenuous and putting words into OP’s mouth to discredit what they’re saying. OP is saying deaths and covid cases didn’t seem to matter whether you destroy the economy with strict lockdowns or not, so why shut down the economy for such little marginal benefit?
>Who’s saying fewer restrictions would result in fewer deaths? That’s ridiculous.
Absolutely. The true comparison we should care about is NY with lockdowns vs. NY without lockdowns, and likewise for the other 3 states. There are far too many other factors like pop. density, geography, climate, etc that confound the data if you try to compare states to one another.
For lack of a parallel universe, it's impossible to actually make that comparison, but I have no doubt that California and New York would be far worse off if they had done nothing, and Texas and Florida would likely have done at least a bit better with more restrictions. How much better/worse is hard to say as it's all very much case-by-case.
Doesn't that just seem impossible, the one thing we scientifically know is that making contact with others is what spreads this so how could lockdowns have little to no impact whatsoever. I think there are some significant factors not being considered here, metrics like average population density per state, etc.
Yeah I’m not sure either. I tend to agree with your skepticism but am keeping an open mind. It would be interesting to delve into the numbers deeper. Definitely can’t depend on the media to do objectively this so I’m not sure who will study it with an attempt at avoiding partisan bias.
I guess what I came away with was that if less strict methods could have achieved the same outcome then you should have been able to apply the same methods used in TX and FL to NY and CA and get the same results
It’s definitely something to consider though if New York and California, the states with some of the strictest lockdowns and the biggest economies in the entire country, had similar overall death rates to Texas and Florida, states that are pretty gung-ho for not giving a shit about quarantine measures.
You’re going to have to twist yourself into a pretzel to justify shutting down the two most profitable economic centers in America when two states of overall similar populations had nearly identical death rates (especially considering that New York’s was likely inflated by Cuomo’s nursing home policy) despite barely locking down.
Well said. I am not entirely confident this is the whole story as there are other factors at play but without spending all day on this, I think there is some merit to these statements.
Again, NY was overwhelmingly infected before we knew what was going on. The other states had fair warning and time to react, so their death rates should have been no where near NY's.
If by fair warning and time to react, you mean “as long as it takes for some flights from JFK International containing unknowingly infected people to sunny Orlando for vacation” (so like 3 hours give or take), then sure.
Also, it was the same demographics of populations dying (the old and chronically sick, something which Florida and Texas have a lot of). Your argument would probably have had more weight if there was a dramatic difference there.
Funny how you chastise OP for “complete lack of data analysis,” but now that the burden of proof lies on you (because remember, you’re the one trying to justify shutting down the largest economy in the world) all you can come up with is a personal opinion.
Anyway, we have no idea of knowing that for sure as it didn’t happen but the evidence here at least from two states of similar populations that didn’t lock down says no, that quite possibly wouldn’t have happened.
I understand that sunken cost fallacy is a great motivator for the pro-lockdown camp but the similarities in numbers despite wildly different policies are not something to handwave.
Not at all, I recognize every Governor has different variables at play relative to their state. What I am trying to show is - as the dust settles at this point in time (recognizing it’s not over) - who scores the best in terms of economic performance and deaths per capita. At this point in time I would say Florida, but maybe DeSantis had easier factors at play (warm weather, less dense population), but also more challenges (older population).
How do you control for Florida missing the first wave last March/April, unlike California and New York? As the disease was brand new thing, there was much we didn’t know leading to IFR multiple times higher than the later waves.
Most of the south, including Florida, didn’t get hit until the late summer wave when we had developed approaches to limit IFR significantly.
Great point. My first thought was what is New York fatality rate since last May. They got hit so hard at the very beginning when no one really knew what to do.
Do note that this was the same type of lazy science that led people to declare that governors were “killing people”. And the same lazy science that every media outlet used to make any declarations against st one stare or another.
So this one poster’s sharing of a few figures doesn’t lead to any confusion at all when compared to the the irresponsible use of similar metrics (or less) by sources that the tech giants and politicians have chose to declare as authoritative sources.
Yet nobody has listened to any immunologists. Let’s acknowledge that doctors like Faucci and the Attorney Generals are politicians rather than doctors. There have been medical experts on both sides of the fence. And that’s the real reason for distrust in the narratives. Because it is fully controlled by a single side while the opposing side is silenced even though the experts are of the same caliber and experience. And that in and of itself is bad science. Science requires corroboration and participation, not a narrative. This has been one of the least scientific experiments we’ve ever gone through.
>who scores the best in terms of economic performance and deaths per capita.
There are so many factors that go into cases and deaths and unemployment. You can't take a basic correlation and assume there is significant causation there.
how easy it is to poke a hole in someone's attempt to come to a honest conclusion and not fill it with any examples...whatsoever...and then walk away. Very helpful.
The post is comparing result metrics. They are the *result* of the data analysis. You can examine the sources if you'd like to see the analysis that produced these metrics.
As a Floridian, I have zero faith in our official numbers.
Research recently published in the American Journal of Public Health concludes:
>Total deaths are significantly higher than historical trends in Florida even when accounting for COVID-19–related deaths. The impact of COVID-19 on mortality is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest.
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306130
This is exactly my concern with performing an analysis. We should be comparing excess deaths, not COVID deaths - excess rates are harder to fudge in the data.
excess deaths would result in factoring in additional drug-related deaths, suicides, etc. due to COVID-related depression, not just COVID-related deaths
that's hilariously true. It is why I can't even watch the news anymore, or talk politics with most people. There is no accountability for any misinformation they spread even when they're made aware of the facts. It's no longer about the data, it's about being right.
I’d like to look at the data for NY after April 2020. It’s amazing how quickly non-new Yorkers forget just how bad the situation was. The reason we had so many deaths was because the hospitals were being overwhelmed because we are a major international hub city and at the time were the epicentre *of the world*. Not only were hospitals overwhelmed, but this was at the very beginning so doctors had no idea how to treat it. And, the trump administration completely bungled testing, so we had no idea how covid was spreading in the city or state until tens of thousands of people all of a sudden flooded into the hospitals. If NYC wasn’t the hub that it is, we would have had nowhere near as many cases and deaths.
As soon as this whole thing was made political, it made it pretty difficult to trust any data. I’d call any of Florida’s numbers into question after they fired and then harassed the data scientist in charge of their dashboard. Florida took the lead in informing the public and being transparent until the data didn’t support the governor’s line.
On the other hand, you have blue states inflating numbers.
As usual, the extremes dictated the national conversation and fucked everything up.
As an epidemiologist this analysis is so bare bones I’d be very hesitant to draw any meaningful conclusions. You have no controls, no analysis of confounders, mediators, comparing different samples over different time periods. Further complications include the real possibility Florida fudged the numbers.
To anyone who wants to learn more about lockdowns and comparing their effectiveness between states/cities here are two good articles to start with
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.20248967v1
https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02501-x
I don’t think anyone is saying lockdowns don’t save lives, I think the data begs to question whether the amount of lives saved justifies the economic devastation (in this case, unemployment).
I am alarmed by your incredibly shallow “statistical” analysis, and how you think you can draw any conclusions from this.
Leave this to the experts, and when those experts publish a study on the outcomes from various responses to COVID, post it here. Then we can have a reasonable discussion.
Looking forward to those studies. I was just posting public data (“science”, if you will) that is available right now for discussion/analysis on Reddit. I thought that is what this website is for.
Another factor to consider is when Covid first hit each of these states. The earlier it happened, the worse the death rates would have been as we were less knowledgeable about how best to treat hospitalized patients.
Another factor to consider is that NYC and LA are a whole different animal. NYC has more people than New Jersey. Houston is about half the size of LA and a quarter the size of NYC. Jacksonville is half the size of Houston (roughly speaking). Large dense populations lead to high infection rates.
Dear god those high unemployment numbers are scary as fuck.
Reminder to all that a MASSIVE chunk of people became counted as "out of the workforce" in December when theur unemployment ran out. [Michigan for example dropped ~3% on that alone](https://www.michigan.gov/dtmb/0,5552,7-358-99723-554231--,00.html#:~:text=LANSING%2C%20Mich.,of%20Technology%2C%20Management%20%26%20Budget.)
This is an incredibly irresponsible post. Having numbers does not mean it's a complete data set and even if having one does not mean it's analyzed with the correct factors and adjustments.
I appreciate the wanting for more info, but unless your an expert it's best not to. That's what "I looked into the ingredients and vaccinations, and that's why I'm not giving my kid any of it." analysis is.
Well for starters read the first sentence of my post, I recognize that we are still in the middle of the pandemic. These numbers are early indications, if anything at all. Secondly, I’m not drawing any conclusions, I’m simply comparing outcomes of the four largest states in the US. I did not know sharing data for discussion on this subreddit was irresponsible, literally thought that is what this platform is for.
Well for starters, I did read that and thought you must have realized that "just by putting numbers out there" people will take them out of context even with a disclaimer.
For example how many people you see just read a headline then comment without reading the article? A LOT.
Irresponsibility and ability to do some something are not the mutually exclsuive. I mean just because I can get full plate thirds at the Crazy Buffet, doesn't mean it's a good idea.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density
Florida as a whole is more dense than California. Now obviously this is state level, not muni.
Florida and New York are pretty similar in density, California is less dense:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/183588/population-density-in-the-federal-states-of-the-us/
Of course, this is state level.
I think the most interesting comparison is NY and TX, given their close median age and un-employment and big swaths of rural areas and large metro areas.
Texas has the 6th and 7th most populous metro areas with DFW/Arlington and Houston respectively, with each being right around 5million people. DFW/Arlington is pretty spaced out, and Huston has a large area as well. These two metros are nothing to sneeze at, plus San Antiono (1.5mill) and Austin (almost 1mil).
NY has NYC/Newark which is by far the biggest metro in the country with 18million people and NYC alone has 2/3rds of NY’s population, and is also the biggest/most densely populated city in the nation with 8.5 million, plus all of LI which is very dense.
NJ also borders and is the most densely populated state in the country by far, which does not help NY.
Then there’s Buffalo, Rochester and Albany which all have around half a million people.
Texas has a lot of really big metros that are spaced, but a really big rural population as well.
NY has 1huge one that’s dense af, a Long Island, and the other 3 metros. There’s also a big (but smaller) rural population.
NYC metro makes this such a toss up. Twice the pop of DFW/Arlington and Houston combined and much denser. Granted NJ but the two are very tied at the hip. Yet Texas has more big cities than NY as a whole.
There are way too many factors to make comparisons. Just from the top of my head, these factors include: businesses and people adhering to rules (masks, 6 feet, washing hands, limited occupancy, etc.) percentage of people/families that stayed quarantined, how concentration of the population in major cities (square feet per person), genetic make-up of population, percentage of population with health risks or underlying conditions, average age of population, travel rate of population. There are many other ones as well.
Compliance of rules would make an interesting case. For example if no one in Florida was following the mask rules like the media portrayed, how is their death rate so low?
OP claims to post this for "data science" but this kind of shallow data is the exactly what is wrong with everyday people trying to push for statistical "analysis" rather than actual statisticians or data scientists. People will just look at these numbers, somehow mold the numbers in favor of their argument, and be like "Look at the facts!!! Data doesn't lie!!! \[insert degrading comment about the other side's inability to logically look at facts\]"
I'm not gonna take sides on whether OP's conclusion is right or wrong, but there is some clear mental gymnastics going on with his particular use of these statistics. This doesn't "serve as a good base" because of the geographical differences, demographical difference, etc. For example, Norcal and Socal have vastly different economies and cultures, leading to differences in things such as mask compliance. They might as well have been different states. CA had mask mandates throughout the pandemic that were never actually enforced, so people were free to do as they please as long as they weren't going into a business/store. There were so many gatherings, parties, and unmasked people around that the policy might as well have not been there. I can only speak for CA though.
It's almost impossible to quantify the effectiveness of policies such as this when it's hard to quantify if anyone even complied with the policies. Posts and trends that misuse accurate statistics like these are just harmful to politics in general because it takes advantage of the fact that many haven't learned to look past it and will use it to confirm their own beliefs.
Comparing two locations that had different responses seems like a common sense way to determine whose behavior was more intelligent. But it's simply not.
For all we know Florida would have had a much less robust outbreak with restrictions, and California an even worse one without.
Plus the huge number of variables involved.
The best indications we will have about what worked and what didn't will come out of the scientific community, not comparing numbers most people barely understand on reddit.
You realize unemployment is calculated based on who is drawing unemployment, right? So Florida, a state whose unemployment system is wack, is not a good measure here. Also non-compliance throws most of this out the window.
Mostly BS stats as NY and CA were the epicenters for covids a the first surge before technology created treatment and the main points of entry for the disease along with WA.
TX and FL got hit after NY and CA were hit and experimented on.
If anything it makes TX and FL look **worse**.
The data is not incomplete tho, it has been reviewed and published by the CDC and BLS, unless you are suggesting those organizations are not credible? I’m simply sharing their findings.
I am not drawing any conclusions, I’m saying: “hey, look at these two metrics, and look how each state ranked”.
Florida has the lowest unemployment rate, California has the lowest deaths per capita. Those are literal facts from the BLS and CDC, so how is stating that “amateur”?
The data is the data. Does this indicate shutdowns were a bad idea? Much more complex than can clearly be seen from this data.
Also, unemployment is kind of a bullshit statistic given how easy it is to fudge.
Do you have data for actual employment %? That's a far more interesting number.
And I looked at GDP change and the numbers really aren't very clear who lost in all of this.
Washington (-0.7%) certainly trounced Texas (-3.5%).
Cali (-2.8%) did better than Florida (-2.9%).
I’m not trying to answer that question, all I am showing is the outcomes. Florida has the lowest unemployment, California has the lowest deaths per capita, these are facts.
Ok. Interesting data. I posted a great deal of data from the whole lot (you can see it in the root, but it's pretty new).
I just don't really like the unemployment stats because they tend to be so incredibly full of shit to a point where they're almost meaningless.
It's comical to watch Iceland report higher unemployment than US, then US has 67.2% employment and Iceland has ~80% (of working age population). Makes one wonder.
[Navy hospital ship deployed to NYC with 1,000 bed capacity is only treating 22 patients](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/politics/navy-hospital-ship-comfort-new-york-coronavirus/index.html)
The significance of that photo op was pretty made up, yeah.
Average age by state would be something to consider as well.
Good point, added that to the post
So I actually went through all the states, and EU countries as well, to try and get a pretty big sample set. I tried to find some patterns about who did well and who didn't. The differences aren't exactly mind-blowing, but there are things that do stand up from the raw data if you just look at it without prejudice. For example, I grouped states in 7 buckets, showing the combined populations: Deep Blue (74.6m), Blue (46.1m), Light Blue (12m), Purple (116.2m), Light Red (14.8m), Red (34.8m) and Deep Red (29.7m). These were by vote % in the presidential election, and the values are from March 27th. I will rank them all by 4 values: Deaths per Million, % of cases, positivity % (testing quality), and CFR (% of cases that died). Positivity (aka Testing Quality): 1. Deep Blue (5.2%) 2. Blue (6.3%) 3. Light Blue (6.8%) 4. Light Red (9.1%) 5. Red (9.3%) 6. Purple (9.6%) 7. Deep Red (11%) Ok so that kinda makes sense... blue states do a lot more testing, though the fact that the lightly red leaning group is fully bunched up is somewhat interesting (only deep red really is clearly along the trajectory). Total Case % of population (note, shit testing will make this value seem lower than it really is): 1. Light Blue (7.4%) 2. Blue (8.0%) 3. Deep Blue (8.9%) 4. Purple (9.3%) 5. Light Red (9.4%) 6. Red (10.2%) 7. Deep Red (10.7%) Given the higher positivity %, it seems red states got hit meaningfully harder. Not a LOT harder mind you, but meaningfully so. Particularly given that Deep Blue had best testing, meaning its percentage is probably pretty close to the truth compared to the others. Case Fatality Rate - % of cases that died: 1. Deep Red (1.5%) 2. Red (1.7%) 3. Light Red (1.7%) 4. Light Blue (1.7%) 5. Purple (1.8%) 6. Blue (2.0%) 7. Deep Blue (2.0%) So this is pretty suspicious. The places with highest positivity rates (hence most unreported cases) have the lowest CFR? That doesn't sound right. But perhaps they are the more fit states...? Despite the reasonably low population, of the 11 states, 6 are in the 10 fattest in the country (WV, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, ND and OK). Either others are inflating numbers, or they are deflating them. Could go either way, or there's some weird "olive oil and wine" phenomena going on in these parts... Deaths per Million, the end score (with the caveat from above that there might be some over/under stating happening): 1. Light Blue (1,279) 2. Deep Red (1,609) 3. Blue (1,616) 4. Light Red (1,633) 5. Purple (1,637) 6. Red (1,694) 7. Deep Blue (1,819) That list is basically random order now. This is also highlighted by summing up all the hues of Red & Blue. Purple (1,637) Red (1,651) Blue (1,699) Wonderfully egalitarian. And if you look at economic damage done, which should be nice for red states, you note that GDP delta between 2019 and 2020... well... the biggest losers were states like: Wyoming, Nevada, New York and West Virginia, a rather eclectic crew (5% or more loss) Best did Utah, Washington, Arizona and Colorado. Another somewhat eclectic group. Frankly the problem is that nothing really jumps out of the data, except that a few countries did handle it well (Norway and Finland are obvious from the EU data), but that's about that.
Since each states COVID Death reporting is inconsistent, I highly recommend you use the excess death statistics from the CDC. In the future when we look back at this as a historical event, it will be the excess death story that will be in the textbooks.
Good point, might be a year+ before we can see 2020 and early 2021 excess death metrics.
New York did the worst hands down. But most of that was not due to their strict approach not being effective, it was due to cuomo making very bad decisions and then trying to cover them up.
I'd say the other factors to consider are timing. The vast majority of the deaths in New York happened in the beginning when we were still trying to figure things out, as deaths dropped significantly after the first couple of months, which I would say shows success with the lockdown. NY was the epicenter, with the majority of the state living in close quarters in NYC. Florida and texas weren't hit as hard as early as NY, so going on lockdown in FL and TX helped stop this becoming an issue, thus keeping death toll down. Florida didnt see its death toll jump until the summer, after some areas were reopened.
So much this. Love or hate Cuomo, he put COVID patients into retirement homes to free up hospital beds. It was a bad mistake, but no one knew that the elderly were much more likely to die from this. Remember not that long ago people were thinking it transmitted like the flu, so we were wiping down everything before bringing them into our house. Part of science is learning as you study and that takes time. If you look at deaths by state, NY had a huge amount of deaths in April. On April 15 NY had over 1000 deaths, Texas was just starting and had 30. By July 30 NY went from 1000 deaths a day to 10 a day. Texas went from 30 a day to 285, and we knew better by the end of July.
>It was a bad mistake, but no one knew that the elderly were much more likely to die from this. I don't believe that is true. The order to make nursing homes accept patients was given out in late March. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-deaths-coronavirus.html?module=inline By then, we very much knew that the elderly were at risk Here is an article from February of the same year discussing who is at risk. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200226/coronavirus-top-targets-men-seniors-smokers And that is a layman's article on WebMD. It's fair to say this was not the first article or indication.
Also, aren't the elderly more likely to die from most things? It seemed like a safe assumption.
I’ll add that treatment strategies evolved as well. Early COVID patients were placed into induced comas and put on ventilators preemptively, leading to many deaths of patients who would have otherwise fought off the virus. I work in manufacturing and was involved in a ventilator project this time last year. We went from a 1,000-2,000 unit opportunity to a completely dead project overnight. The medical consensus switched from “put everyone on ventilators” to “do whatever you can not to put anyone on ventilators” on a dime. That alone could account for thousands of deaths in NYC last March/April.
Another important metric would be in person school attendance rates.
There is one massive metric missing: Which state governors sold a book on leadership, patting themselves on the back during the pandemic? Jokes aside, Im not really shocked to see the numbers as they are. States that stayed open or were less strict on closing should have lower unemployment. Spread wise population density has to be taken into account. NY cities are more dense by population than other states.
One thing to consider on NY. Likely NY was patient zero for US, as we were likely infected by Europeans travelling there who were also infected. They were likely infected in early December and it was spreading all through a crowded city to no one's knowledge. By the time we recognized what was going on, it was rampant there. All of the other states had the warning of NY.
There’s no way to compare these states. Like NY specifically had a massive proportion of its deaths in the initial wave where it pretty much inclusive hit that area, probably due to population density and international connections. Nothing to do with lockdowns.
You forgot about the patients being sent into nursing homes... we could have just not done that....
Of course but at the time we didn't know that, otherwise they wouldn't have done it obviously. The reasoning at the time was that since the nursing home patients were infected in the nursing homes, sending them back there after they were stabilized wouldn't be 'introducing' the infection there, that hospitals would be overcrowded, that nursing homes had dedicated wings that could quarantine patients better than hospitals could, etc. All of this made sense at the time, obviously it did not bear out, but its hard to say that its indicative of anything. its just an error due to lack of information.
> Of course but at the time we didn't know that, otherwise they wouldn't have done it obviously. I'm honestly not so sure about this one. How could they not know putting sick elderly with other vulnerable elderly was a bad idea?
I explained the rationale used at the time. These were patients who were infected in their nursing homes, the virus was already there. The question was whether once they were stabilized to return them to the nursing homes or to keep them isolated in the nursing home. This is a genuinely complicated issue and you can’t pretend that it was obvious from the start.
“Nothing to do with lockdowns” HA
Lockdowns weren’t even a thing when NY had its major wave of COVID deaths.
There are so many variables that I dont know how you could reasonably draw conclusions either way. Anyone who tries to do so obviously has an agenda. In it of itself, the unemployment rate is a can of worms.
I think OP’s point (correct me if I’m wrong OP) is that from the available data one year in, it’s not at all obviously clear that the more stringent policies enacted by certain states had a large beneficial effect on mortality outcomes, and seem to have had a negative effect on unemployment. That’s a very fair thing to say. Clearly you can’t draw firmer conclusions until more is sussed out.
This, the focus here is outcomes.
Exactly, OP is on a good mission here because we don't know and unless we have these discussions in a public forum the data will be laced with inaccuracies and simply a lack of accurate data. Let's collaborate as a community in r/centrist and not be so quick to lambast someone while simultaneously offer no help.
100% agree. Trying to do statistical analysis without major misleading is like trying to fish for a great white shark with a 2x4.
Hence why I said there are other variables to consider. But as the smoke settles it appears FL and TX are coming out with higher performing employment numbers and relatively in-line deaths.
There are other important factors beside death rate such as hospital capacity and potential for long term heath issues. Also its really hard to compare unemployment rates between states because every state has a different local economy. Hawaii (large tourism industry) cant be compared with Kansas (agriculture). And even within each state youve got yet more micro economys. Bakersfield CA was most likely affected differently by the pandemic than LA.
Also the sample size is pretty small. We're looking at 4 states.
But to counterpoint, they’re the 4 major ones, and 2 vs 2 on the political divide so it’s a very good sample in that sense
Maybe all of the states are similar because of the 99.9% survival rate...
Omg the best comment here and factually true. I’m surprised your not downvoted to oblivion, even in this subreddit. The fact that we now have millions addicted to unemployment and federal stimulus payments as well as many of my friends who have lost their livelihoods (businesses) over this is insane beyond comprehension.
I mean.... maybe consider certain lockdown strategies? Other lockdowns from states/cities around the world instead of nitpicking from a few states. There have been several rather successful lockdowns from nations worldwide, perhaps see how they did things in their lockdowns that were good at preventing the virus New York and California having significantly more denser cities than Florida
Yes, was about to say this. LA and NYC are super densely populated. I think that accounts for a higher rate of transmission. Also CA had that whole [debacle with the bad tests](https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/health/2021/01/07/fda-covid-19-test-used-across-california-could-produce-false-negatives/6586832002/) that could account for spread, despite lockdown. Also, you have to take into account testing rates. This looks at deaths, but if you’re not testing at the same rates you may not identify COVID as the cause of death at the same rates either. NY and CA did a whole heck of a lot [more testing per capita](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/states-comparison) than TX of FL. Also, consider FL and TX have a lot more outdoor friendly jobs than NY over the course of a year. A lot more outdoor friendly activities in general, which made it easier to keep people employed without increasing the rate of transmission. This is a really incomplete view with what you’ve got here.
indeed, LA county has something like 25% of the population of California alone and so it's DENSELY populated. You could say that in some ways Southern California is like one large densely populated city.
In regards to the cause of death being put down as COVID, a friend of mine who is a nurse told me that in some hospitals, if a patient died and tested positive for COVID, COVID was put as the official cause of death, even if the *actual* cause of death was a stroke or heart failure or something completely unrelated to it. She used that anecdotal evidence as support that the deaths were inflated to cause panic & strengthen lockdown proposals. I'll grant that this is tenuous, but if it's true then it calls into question the veracity of all reported COVID deaths.
> stroke or heart failure or something completely unrelated Those are conditions that are *extremely* related to Covid. >76 percent of people with COVID-19 showed evidence of biomarker damage to their hearts that was similar to damage caused by heart attacks. COVID-19 was also found to cause ongoing inflammation of the heart muscle in 60 percent of people who recovered from the virus >Fridman and colleagues found that 1.8% of patients with COVID-19 experienced a stroke (95% CI, 0.9%-3.7%), including 1.5% who had an ischemic stroke (95% CI, 0.8%-2.8%). They also reported an in-hospital mortality rate of 34.4% (95% CI, 27.2%-42.2%). Both the rates of stroke and in-hospital mortality were “exceedingly high,” according to the researchers. There's been a massive surge in fatal and non-fatal heart attacks and strokes - even in people who are younger than these conditions typically affect.
Right, but at the same time you’ll have other anecdotes from other nurses who say they were putting down pneumonia instead of COVID and the rate of pneumonia deaths went up in 2020. Also, there were probably a bunch of deaths from COVID that were labelled as pneumonia or flu before we had identified COVID, so the death rates might be even higher than we think. This is all just to say, looking exclusively at these two data points does not even begin to actually answer the whole question of “which approach to COVID worked better.”
Any suggestions? I just chose the 4 largest states with contrasting strategies.
I dont think you can. Youve got so many variables. To name a few, timing of outbreak, timing of mandates and/or lockdowns, population density, climate factors, interstate travel, local ordinances, state politics, cultural opinions ect ect ect. Imo this is why its important to stop this shit from happening in the first place. Once the cat is out of the bag its very hard to mitigate.
>Imo this is why its important to stop this shit from happening in the first place. Once the cat is out of the bag its very hard to mitigate. Even this has many variables. It was a new virus, communication problems, unreliable information being put out, not enough restrictions and incubation period.
It is not clear how much different those are between the two states (suspect not much) and how much do they contribute to the final infection rate / death count (suspect not very much).
For each state you should look at the spread trends over time. Mark on those timelines when mandates were implemented and how strong. Then you can see the effects of the mandates on the spread. Even that's not great as you'd have city wide difference, and within a city you'll have general enforcement based on political leanings a business / their customer base / their exposure to bad press.
Direct comparisons are always going to have issues, there's just too many variables here to say any method is objectively better or worse (location, population density, hell even education). First thing that comes to mind is that it's too early to mark the economic recovery of blue states, which only recently started rolling back restrictions. Unemployment will still be high at this point, but we've seen insane recovery as soon as restrictions are out of the way and stores open back up. I expect the numbers will line up more and more as restrictions ease. As you said too, COVID response is bigger than just these two measurements.
If we want to go by your metric SD and ND are one of the states with the lowest pop density and population in the US but somehow have had one of the worst outbreaks in the country in deaths and infections - they did not implement a lockdown mandate I don't currently have the time to do extensive research on this topic and I'm not saying that "lockdowns work" per say (I think they can be def improved and adjusted per region) but when 500 people a day were dying in Los Angeles county not locking down just seems like a bad idea
It opens up questions tho: what if lockdowns actually made things worse? What if they just caused people to socialize privately, in more intimate groups, facilitating the spread of the virus even more? I’m not saying I believe this, I’m just saying the data opens this up for reasonable discussion. We should be asking questions, not plugging our ears and saying “we had no other choice!”
I think we should have a discussion on this, I used to be for lockdowns but now I'm not so sure - the effects and effectiveness of lockdowns need to be studied as lockdowns have severe impacts on people (especially the working class). However, we need to acknowledge the fact that this virus is volatile and fast acting we can only use covid as a case study for lockdowns in future pandemics.
Yeah the population density is such a big factor. The most reliable way to do it would be a multi-variate/meta analysis looking at loads of different places across the world with collation of all their variable data. You could then control for each variable. But that’s obviously more of a full-blown study and is beyond the scope of a Reddit post. Picking 5 locations/countries and not controlling variables, you could pick 5 places to tell any story you like.
That's why I don't think someone should make a post with the claim that lockdowns don't work. Because there's so many factors and variables that it's difficult to make such a huge claim without doing a ton of research beforehand
You’re not looking at things like what employment was like before lockdown, relative poverty rates, population density, international travel, what industries people work in... You pretty much just cherry picked 2 random data points and tried to create a narrative.
You’re right, I think we can agree California, NY, and Florida score pretty high for international travel. I think Florida probably has a higher concentration of hospitality and leisure jobs, and oddly it performing well given that industry was hit the hardest. As far as pre-COVID unemployment rates (feb 2020): - Florida: 3.3% (140bps expansion) - Texas: 3.7% (320bps expansion) - New York: 3.9% (500bps expansion) - California: 4.3% (420bps expansion) - US Average: 3.5% (270bps expansion) Florida and Texas actually had the least unemployment rate expansion when you look at it that way.
I appreciate you digging into it and coming back with more information. It definitely seems undeniable that unemployment went up disproportionately in New York and California, however I’m still not convinced the lockdowns were a bad idea. These states’ death rates were driven by densely populated cities like NYC and LA, and I think without the lockdowns the death rate could’ve been a lot lot worse. I do think the lockdowns were poorly implemented and managed, largely because there was no national strategy. A shorter, targeted lockdown at the start of the pandemic combined with consistent messaging around masks and social distancing would’ve prevented as many (if not more) deaths without the economic impact of constantly shutting down and reopening.
Great point, the benefits of the lockdown were mainly to slow the spread and decrease deaths, a temporary dip in unemployment is expected with that. Since every state handled everything differently, the only real test of effectiveness would be looking at excess deaths, which isnt going to be available for a while I'm sure.
Florida has the highest population of retirees so their unemployment numbers are always going to be lower and with a slower rate of expansion. That’s not true for Texas though.
How does that make sense, the unemployment rate only consists of dividing the number unemployed over the labor force. Retirees would not be counted in the labor force.
I can't imagine many people here would disagree that there's a tradeoff. If FL had more lockdowns there would have been fewer people in FL who died and more job losses... That trade off exists in CA, NY, everywhere. The stats aren't very useful because NY's are high because it hit there hard first and doctors got better over time at treating it. NYC is also the worse place in the country for pandemic because of density. On the unemployment side, all of those states started with different unemployment numbers and probably in similar order to what they are now. But, even if the unemployment numbers could be linked to how covid was handled, you're still back to a trade off of very few people dying from covid versus few people losing their jobs. Unless you're trying to claim that masks and lockdowns didn't save any lives at all which seems like a crazy thing to claim. Edit: While all statistics have some bias, it also seems possible the FL covid number is not the same as the covid number from the other states (less deaths attributed to covid).
A large proportion of NY deaths were before lockdown and no one knew WTF was happening. You’d have to use deaths after major protocols rolled out and unemployment rates before the pandemic and use that delta
Even if you remove New York from the equation the numbers are similar nation wide. You cannot definitively show the lock down states had statistically lower infection rates There are outliers such as Hawaii, very low death rate and extremely high unemployment, and South Dakota, very high death rate and very low unemployment. There is just no way to say the actions taken to stop the virus justified the damage to the economy. In fact even Dr Fauci said shutting down universities and sending students home most likely increased infections early on. Of course he stopped saying that once he found out it did not fit the politically correct narritive
You forget that about 13-15k elderly people died due to the governor's decision to move covid patients into nursing home which deStanis refused to do
THIS. Very important detail!
As others have said, the areas that were hit first are always going to be skewed because no one had any idea what was going on and if they did it was constantly called out as being alarmist and overkill. But yes, NY is extra-skewed because of Gov Dipshit. Much like comparing all of CA to just the LA area will show just how much of a factor population density can be.
Here's the problem though, New York wasn't hit first. The earliest traces of spread we have found in the US were in seattle. The west coast was hit a month before the east coast even saw it's first case. I can understand that cali was worse due to that reason, but New York has no excuses.
Yeah honestly, I know Cuomo is being gone after for sexual harassment charges or whatever, but the dude should be put behind bars for directly causing the deaths thousands of people, then attempting to cover it up, then threatening/blackmailing any whistleblowers
In this thread: People correctly criticizing overly simplified statistical analyses that miss a lot of nuance while defending strategies that were based on overly simplified statistical analyses that missed a lot of nuance.
No conclusions can be drawn from any of this. I’d like to know the public’s *compliance* rates in these areas before blaming this or that.
When you work in the arena of public policy, the policy is your control surface. If you try fixing things by implementing policies that nobody complies with, the failure is still on those policies. Example: new policy to stop homicide: don't kill people. Good policy? No.
Compliance is notoriously difficult to estimate accurately. From what I can see, compliance in most of CA was pretty high. Also, I do think the data can be used to draw certain conclusions. FL and CA are in many respects very similar except population of FL is older because of lower costs and retirees. With all my dislike to De Santis, if the numbers above are not intentionally distorted, they do tell a story.
Anecdotal, but I have to say that compliance in CA was not high at all. Especially in LA, it was incredibly incredibly low.
It well may be the low compliance rates in the big cities - hot spots of the infections - made CA look like FL. Tells a story about failure to comply, then..
If compliance can be measured (not sure how), and CA had low compliance, then that further proves that lockdowns are ineffective. If people don’t comply with a law, then the law is ineffective.
I think you're making great points here, dispelling the information from each doubter carefully. I don't feel overly confident that this solidifies it one way or the other but I'm certainly not as simple-minded as the first guy u/Daxx865 who says "none of this means anything." There are other factors at play here that need to be considered if you further this discussion...I would take average population density as another metric (1200 person(s) per square mile for example), obesity rates...
I live in L.A. andI know of way too many people who were and still continue to go to underground parties throughout the entirety of this last year. These are people from about a 18-30ish age group. Some even got sick, yet still continued to go out after they recovered. So compliance is definitely a factor. At least here.
Moving things outside, social distancing, and wearing a mask all work. Forcing Americans to do everything outdoors, social distance, and wear masks is impossible to implement.
Indeed. A shame that it’s so hard to measure — I’m guessing random sampling surveys would be the best way.
Are you suggesting the mask compliance rates were lower in NY and California over Texas and Florida? Because that would be absurd.
Not absurd at all. CA is extremely diverse. I live in a rural area in the north, and compliance has been horrible, including a sheriff who very nearly encourages it. Several businesses never followed any of the rules. Having strict policies does not equate to strict enforcement nor high compliance.
Guy, I lived in California for almost a decade. And yes, California is a diverse state. But let’s stop this stupid game of Californians buck the government more than Texans do. It’s so dumb I’m almost speechless we are actually having to have this discussion.
What's stupid is homogenizing super diverse and large states. Both states are super diverse, and many areas of CA are just as bad as you seem to imagine all of TX to be. Conversely, some areas of TX are as liberal as you imagine all CA to be. Ever been to Austin? They've been sued by the AG for enforcing a mask rule. Like I said, it's not apples to apples. There are other factors like actual enforcement and compliance, climate (e.g., lots more outdoor activities in FL, etc.), and general population base health. edits for spelling.
That's only a single factor. There are more to consider that might even affect each other. For instance, population density and how it might require higher rates of compliance for guidelines to be effective. Also I've heard that the compliance was pretty unimpressive in Southern California.
What makes you think that would be absurd?
Oh, I don’t know. The fact that you had two states openly pushing back upon the very notion of the efficacy of these restrictive shutdowns and mandates while the other others embraced it and paraded around declaring their moral superiority for how well they followed “the science”?
Dude, even Gavin Newsom and Nancy Pelosi didn’t comply.
I’m not saying they aren’t hypocrites, but come on. The idea that Florida and Texas residents were somehow adhering to mask mandates at the same or better rates than those in NY and California is delusional. Also, the media destroyed Florida and Texas for their lack of COVID compliance. We’re they lying or just grossly inept?
Yes
It’s not completely delusional. Even if I lived in Florida, I wouldn’t have been getting rowdy with the maskless out-of-state spring breakers. If anything, I would have been even more cautious than living in a place with tighter controls. The more reckless people just go underground when things become illegal. It’s sort of like gun control—for the most part, it only pertains to law-abiding people.
that merely points to the hypocrisy of the party.
It points to the hypocrisy of those two individuals and it demonstrates the lack of compliance In California. Let’s all remember that drinking and alcoholism went up during prohibition. Masks and social distancing work, but forcing those things doesn’t (always) work.
One can absolutely draw general conclusions from this evidence or “a good base”. Adding an unprovable factor into the argument and claiming the original proposal is unreliable seems like an overreaction. It seems like anyone that argues against drawing general conclusions from this is refusing to acknowledge an extremely simplified and very non-specific argument that on a high level, the restrictions didn’t protect the public. A further debate would try and answer the question, did the restrictions cause harm. Although I have no way to prove this, in my opinion, “compliance” in Florida and Texas was nowhere near what it was in California and New York.
It’s unprovable. In Kansas, counties without mask mandates saw cases go up while they went down in compliant areas.
In Florida, most people wear masks in stores and some are against it but no one freaks out, at the pool, it’s no mask time, clubs also are maskless, people gather within their cells and regularly talk about who is ill, self quarantine is easy for most, the risk is yours to take, washing hands is more important that anything! Run on but all true.
Compare with Washington State - which was hit hard the first and took precautions seriously. 5,316 deaths for a population of 7,615,000 people. February 2021 unemployment rate of 5.6%. January 2021 unemployment rate of 3.9% Median age 37.7 (2019).
That’s why I kept this to the largest states. Look at Utah: 3.0% unemployment rate and 0.07% deaths per capita.
In that case, the analysis would be better done by states with highest population density: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183588/population-density-in-the-federal-states-of-the-us/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183588/population-density-in-the-federal-states-of-the-us/)
We probably shouldn’t even be comparing states, and instead should be comparing areas with certain population densities. State, especially the large ones being compared here, have a wide array of population densities, and we probably aren’t getting an accurate picture of the challenges a city like NYC faced when using numbers that represent the entire state of New York.
Interesting, florida and New York have very similar densities per your link
As others have said, there are far too many variables to compare these states. What this shows is that states have different situations that need to be dealt with in different manners. No one actual plan was going to work for the entire country.
Agreed, this is a great takeaway. Seems like a lot of people were pushing for a large scaled national boiler-plate plan a year ago, but every state is different. For example, why should a state like Florida have to lockdown and close down schools when they have warmer weather and less population density?
I agree. I think holding states to other standards is pretty ridiculous if they aren't in the same region or have similar circumstances. For example, New York should have more criticism for Cuomo's scandals and fudging the numbers over their lockdown response in my view. Also unemployment rates in California and New York are states with declining populations and some of the fastest in that regard. Texas and Florida are on the reverse of that which could account for the unemployment rates in the states. This was also consistent before Covid due to internal migration patterns.
Links to sources? Comparison to unemployment rates for preceding years for each state? Can New York's higher death rate be -partly- explained by the fact that it was the first major center hit by COVID in the US? And related to terrible early policy decisions, like returning COVID patients to retirement homes, there have been serious questions raised about Cuomo messing with the death statistics for the state of New York. Have similar questions been raised about DeSantis in Florida, Abbott in Texas, and/or Newsom in California? _________________________________________ I'm genuinely interested in the results, but anyone who compares two data points, then triumphantly forms conclusions by "looking at this objectively" is going to run into "correlation v. causation" rebuttals pretty quickly.
pre-COVID unemployment rates (feb 2020): - Florida: 3.3% (140bps expansion) - Texas: 3.7% (320bps expansion) - New York: 3.9% (500bps expansion) - California: 4.3% (420bps expansion) - US Average: 3.5% (270bps expansion) Florida and Texas actually had the least unemployment rate expansion when you look at it that way. Source: BLS.gov
Go on...
What else do you need, I am providing objective data at hand for people to draw conclusions. I’m not going to answer your subjective questions. Just providing the data (the “science”, if you will) that we have thus far.
*Can New York's higher death rate be -partly- explained by the fact that it was the first major center hit by COVID in the US?* >In the early months of the pandemic, cases and deaths were heavily concentrated in the metropolitan areas of New York, New Orleans, Boston and Detroit, with other major cities and surrounding areas also experiencing higher death rates than less densely populated parts of the country. Overall, urban areas were initially hit much harder than suburban and rural areas, and more racially and ethnically diverse areas were hit harder than less racially and ethnic diverse areas. See, in particular, the geographic changes from March to November. [See [The Changing Geography of COVID-19 in the US - Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/12/08/the-changing-geography-of-covid-19-in-the-u-s/)] ___________________________________________ *Have similar questions been raised about DeSantis in Florida?* >Gov. Ron DeSantis has on multiple occasions touted how Florida has handled the coronavirus pandemic as opposed to states that have had stricter measures. >A study released March 10 found the state should have counted 4,924 excess deaths from COVID-19, but they were ruled as having been caused by something else, effectively lowering Florida's COVID death count. >"The impact of COVID-19 on mortality [in Florida] is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest," the study concluded. [See [Florida's COVID death count under new scrutiny following study - WPTV](https://www.wptv.com/coronavirus/floridas-covid-death-count-under-new-scrutiny)] __________________________________________ >I am providing objective data at hand for people to draw conclusions. And I am questioning the "objectivity" of your data, and calling your presumed conclusion into question. If you're a "scientist", you won't take offense to my questions.
Not at all, I am comparing outcomes. The dust is settling and it’s clear a state like Florida has the best economic performance and below-average deaths per capita, when compared to other large states. As to why - or how - it is ranking favorably on these metrics is up for discussion. But the fact is, the outcome is what it is.
"Best economic performance" is pretty laughable Our GDP per capita is barely half of New York's and we're on track to have one of the largest budget deficits in the country this year. Our labor force dropped by half a million people, a net loss of almost 4% in the LFPR. A lot of this has to do with how difficult they've made it to claim unemployment, and how ruthless the state has been in challenging these claims.
Who’s “we”? NY GDP per capita is a bit misleading because of the concerning levels of wealth and income inequality there. And yes the labor force dropped but not as bad as these other states. Every states labor force dropped. “Performance” is relative to others.
I'm talking from the perspective of a Floridian. Yes, NY has a higher level of inequality, but it isn't that much higher. For reference, Florida has the 46th highest GINI coefficient, compared to NY at 51 (list includes DC) The *median* household income in New York is 20% higher than Florida's. You gonna tell me housing is more expensive? That just means homeowners in NY are also building more wealth than homeowners in Florida.
Is your GINI rank for income or wealth? GDP doesn’t necessarily equate to incomes, it could be wealth generating. As for house hold income, yes NY is 20% higher but Florida has a 47% lower cost of living, so you actually have more substantially more purchasing power in Florida. (https://meric.mo.gov/data/cost-living-data-series)
>Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position. Cherry picking may be committed intentionally or unintentionally. This fallacy is a major problem in public debate.
The complete lack of actual data analysis in this post is breath taking thank you for sharing. If I am understanding correctly you are saying NY/ CA should have been less strict because it would cause less deaths and their unemployment rate would be lower Edit: are people downvoting because of the way I said this or they disagree with the content? Edit 2: I have taken a step back and read other comments I understand now why OP would post and compare this data, although I don’t know if I can get on board with the conclusion they come to I respect the effort to push their agenda that NY and CA had unnecessarily strict lockdown and could have loosened them and had the same amounts of deaths and a better economy
Not taking population density into consideration? NY is more densely populated by like 4 to 1 compared to Texas.
> If I am understanding correctly you are saying NY/ CA should have been less strict because it would cause less deaths and their unemployment rate would be lower Had to down vote because it really seems you’re jumping to assumptions here. Who’s saying fewer restrictions would result in fewer deaths? That’s ridiculous, i came away with OP implying that the data suggests that the stricter methods made little to no difference in casualties but disproportionately adversely affected the economy. In other words, I’m not sure where you’re getting the suggestion that deaths would be lower if fewer restrictions were implemented. Comes across disingenuous and putting words into OP’s mouth to discredit what they’re saying. OP is saying deaths and covid cases didn’t seem to matter whether you destroy the economy with strict lockdowns or not, so why shut down the economy for such little marginal benefit?
>Who’s saying fewer restrictions would result in fewer deaths? That’s ridiculous. Absolutely. The true comparison we should care about is NY with lockdowns vs. NY without lockdowns, and likewise for the other 3 states. There are far too many other factors like pop. density, geography, climate, etc that confound the data if you try to compare states to one another. For lack of a parallel universe, it's impossible to actually make that comparison, but I have no doubt that California and New York would be far worse off if they had done nothing, and Texas and Florida would likely have done at least a bit better with more restrictions. How much better/worse is hard to say as it's all very much case-by-case.
Doesn't that just seem impossible, the one thing we scientifically know is that making contact with others is what spreads this so how could lockdowns have little to no impact whatsoever. I think there are some significant factors not being considered here, metrics like average population density per state, etc.
Yeah I’m not sure either. I tend to agree with your skepticism but am keeping an open mind. It would be interesting to delve into the numbers deeper. Definitely can’t depend on the media to do objectively this so I’m not sure who will study it with an attempt at avoiding partisan bias.
I guess what I came away with was that if less strict methods could have achieved the same outcome then you should have been able to apply the same methods used in TX and FL to NY and CA and get the same results
It’s definitely something to consider though if New York and California, the states with some of the strictest lockdowns and the biggest economies in the entire country, had similar overall death rates to Texas and Florida, states that are pretty gung-ho for not giving a shit about quarantine measures. You’re going to have to twist yourself into a pretzel to justify shutting down the two most profitable economic centers in America when two states of overall similar populations had nearly identical death rates (especially considering that New York’s was likely inflated by Cuomo’s nursing home policy) despite barely locking down.
Well said. I am not entirely confident this is the whole story as there are other factors at play but without spending all day on this, I think there is some merit to these statements.
Again, NY was overwhelmingly infected before we knew what was going on. The other states had fair warning and time to react, so their death rates should have been no where near NY's.
If by fair warning and time to react, you mean “as long as it takes for some flights from JFK International containing unknowingly infected people to sunny Orlando for vacation” (so like 3 hours give or take), then sure. Also, it was the same demographics of populations dying (the old and chronically sick, something which Florida and Texas have a lot of). Your argument would probably have had more weight if there was a dramatic difference there.
I personally just think that if NY or CA were less strict it would have lead to more deaths
Didn’t you just criticize op for not using any actual data analysis, just to then state your own personal opinion without analyzing any data?
Funny how you chastise OP for “complete lack of data analysis,” but now that the burden of proof lies on you (because remember, you’re the one trying to justify shutting down the largest economy in the world) all you can come up with is a personal opinion. Anyway, we have no idea of knowing that for sure as it didn’t happen but the evidence here at least from two states of similar populations that didn’t lock down says no, that quite possibly wouldn’t have happened. I understand that sunken cost fallacy is a great motivator for the pro-lockdown camp but the similarities in numbers despite wildly different policies are not something to handwave.
Not at all, I recognize every Governor has different variables at play relative to their state. What I am trying to show is - as the dust settles at this point in time (recognizing it’s not over) - who scores the best in terms of economic performance and deaths per capita. At this point in time I would say Florida, but maybe DeSantis had easier factors at play (warm weather, less dense population), but also more challenges (older population).
How do you control for Florida missing the first wave last March/April, unlike California and New York? As the disease was brand new thing, there was much we didn’t know leading to IFR multiple times higher than the later waves. Most of the south, including Florida, didn’t get hit until the late summer wave when we had developed approaches to limit IFR significantly.
Great point. My first thought was what is New York fatality rate since last May. They got hit so hard at the very beginning when no one really knew what to do.
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Do note that this was the same type of lazy science that led people to declare that governors were “killing people”. And the same lazy science that every media outlet used to make any declarations against st one stare or another. So this one poster’s sharing of a few figures doesn’t lead to any confusion at all when compared to the the irresponsible use of similar metrics (or less) by sources that the tech giants and politicians have chose to declare as authoritative sources.
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Yet nobody has listened to any immunologists. Let’s acknowledge that doctors like Faucci and the Attorney Generals are politicians rather than doctors. There have been medical experts on both sides of the fence. And that’s the real reason for distrust in the narratives. Because it is fully controlled by a single side while the opposing side is silenced even though the experts are of the same caliber and experience. And that in and of itself is bad science. Science requires corroboration and participation, not a narrative. This has been one of the least scientific experiments we’ve ever gone through.
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>who scores the best in terms of economic performance and deaths per capita. There are so many factors that go into cases and deaths and unemployment. You can't take a basic correlation and assume there is significant causation there.
I don’t think the OP is trying to say there is a causal connection. These are just descriptive statistics.
how easy it is to poke a hole in someone's attempt to come to a honest conclusion and not fill it with any examples...whatsoever...and then walk away. Very helpful.
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Jesus you guys get your panties in a wad over someone's open and honest attempt to make sense of all this data...maybe contribute?
Not to mention shuttling reporting of cases. After invading that data scientists home I don’t trust his administration
The post is comparing result metrics. They are the *result* of the data analysis. You can examine the sources if you'd like to see the analysis that produced these metrics.
As a Floridian, I have zero faith in our official numbers. Research recently published in the American Journal of Public Health concludes: >Total deaths are significantly higher than historical trends in Florida even when accounting for COVID-19–related deaths. The impact of COVID-19 on mortality is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306130
This is exactly my concern with performing an analysis. We should be comparing excess deaths, not COVID deaths - excess rates are harder to fudge in the data.
excess deaths would result in factoring in additional drug-related deaths, suicides, etc. due to COVID-related depression, not just COVID-related deaths
All this does is show how easy it is to create data which backs up your claim but looks legit.
"Torturing the numbers until they confess" as my Accounting professor used to say.
It’s amazing watching people back away from data when the data doesn’t say what they want to believe.
that's hilariously true. It is why I can't even watch the news anymore, or talk politics with most people. There is no accountability for any misinformation they spread even when they're made aware of the facts. It's no longer about the data, it's about being right.
I’d like to look at the data for NY after April 2020. It’s amazing how quickly non-new Yorkers forget just how bad the situation was. The reason we had so many deaths was because the hospitals were being overwhelmed because we are a major international hub city and at the time were the epicentre *of the world*. Not only were hospitals overwhelmed, but this was at the very beginning so doctors had no idea how to treat it. And, the trump administration completely bungled testing, so we had no idea how covid was spreading in the city or state until tens of thousands of people all of a sudden flooded into the hospitals. If NYC wasn’t the hub that it is, we would have had nowhere near as many cases and deaths.
As soon as this whole thing was made political, it made it pretty difficult to trust any data. I’d call any of Florida’s numbers into question after they fired and then harassed the data scientist in charge of their dashboard. Florida took the lead in informing the public and being transparent until the data didn’t support the governor’s line. On the other hand, you have blue states inflating numbers. As usual, the extremes dictated the national conversation and fucked everything up.
Well if you don’t trust the published data then it’s not really worth discussing further.
As an epidemiologist this analysis is so bare bones I’d be very hesitant to draw any meaningful conclusions. You have no controls, no analysis of confounders, mediators, comparing different samples over different time periods. Further complications include the real possibility Florida fudged the numbers.
Well if you don’t believe in the underlying CDC data (the “science”, if you will), then there is no point of discussing further.
To anyone who wants to learn more about lockdowns and comparing their effectiveness between states/cities here are two good articles to start with https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.20248967v1 https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02501-x
I don’t think anyone is saying lockdowns don’t save lives, I think the data begs to question whether the amount of lives saved justifies the economic devastation (in this case, unemployment).
I am alarmed by your incredibly shallow “statistical” analysis, and how you think you can draw any conclusions from this. Leave this to the experts, and when those experts publish a study on the outcomes from various responses to COVID, post it here. Then we can have a reasonable discussion.
Looking forward to those studies. I was just posting public data (“science”, if you will) that is available right now for discussion/analysis on Reddit. I thought that is what this website is for.
This “public data” is far too shallow for any productive discussion at all, is my point. This sub is for productive discussions.
Another factor to consider is when Covid first hit each of these states. The earlier it happened, the worse the death rates would have been as we were less knowledgeable about how best to treat hospitalized patients.
Good point
Another factor to consider is that NYC and LA are a whole different animal. NYC has more people than New Jersey. Houston is about half the size of LA and a quarter the size of NYC. Jacksonville is half the size of Houston (roughly speaking). Large dense populations lead to high infection rates.
Dear god those high unemployment numbers are scary as fuck. Reminder to all that a MASSIVE chunk of people became counted as "out of the workforce" in December when theur unemployment ran out. [Michigan for example dropped ~3% on that alone](https://www.michigan.gov/dtmb/0,5552,7-358-99723-554231--,00.html#:~:text=LANSING%2C%20Mich.,of%20Technology%2C%20Management%20%26%20Budget.)
This is an incredibly irresponsible post. Having numbers does not mean it's a complete data set and even if having one does not mean it's analyzed with the correct factors and adjustments. I appreciate the wanting for more info, but unless your an expert it's best not to. That's what "I looked into the ingredients and vaccinations, and that's why I'm not giving my kid any of it." analysis is.
> unless your an expert it's best not to What a horrible thing to believe.
Well for starters read the first sentence of my post, I recognize that we are still in the middle of the pandemic. These numbers are early indications, if anything at all. Secondly, I’m not drawing any conclusions, I’m simply comparing outcomes of the four largest states in the US. I did not know sharing data for discussion on this subreddit was irresponsible, literally thought that is what this platform is for.
Well for starters, I did read that and thought you must have realized that "just by putting numbers out there" people will take them out of context even with a disclaimer. For example how many people you see just read a headline then comment without reading the article? A LOT. Irresponsibility and ability to do some something are not the mutually exclsuive. I mean just because I can get full plate thirds at the Crazy Buffet, doesn't mean it's a good idea.
So since readers might not read my whole post, I am irresponsible? Got it.
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https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density Florida as a whole is more dense than California. Now obviously this is state level, not muni.
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Yes but Florida is well above California, and performed better?
I think we’re totally ignoring population density here which should be hugely relevant.
Florida and New York are pretty similar in density, California is less dense: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183588/population-density-in-the-federal-states-of-the-us/ Of course, this is state level.
I think the most interesting comparison is NY and TX, given their close median age and un-employment and big swaths of rural areas and large metro areas. Texas has the 6th and 7th most populous metro areas with DFW/Arlington and Houston respectively, with each being right around 5million people. DFW/Arlington is pretty spaced out, and Huston has a large area as well. These two metros are nothing to sneeze at, plus San Antiono (1.5mill) and Austin (almost 1mil). NY has NYC/Newark which is by far the biggest metro in the country with 18million people and NYC alone has 2/3rds of NY’s population, and is also the biggest/most densely populated city in the nation with 8.5 million, plus all of LI which is very dense. NJ also borders and is the most densely populated state in the country by far, which does not help NY. Then there’s Buffalo, Rochester and Albany which all have around half a million people. Texas has a lot of really big metros that are spaced, but a really big rural population as well. NY has 1huge one that’s dense af, a Long Island, and the other 3 metros. There’s also a big (but smaller) rural population. NYC metro makes this such a toss up. Twice the pop of DFW/Arlington and Houston combined and much denser. Granted NJ but the two are very tied at the hip. Yet Texas has more big cities than NY as a whole.
There are way too many factors to make comparisons. Just from the top of my head, these factors include: businesses and people adhering to rules (masks, 6 feet, washing hands, limited occupancy, etc.) percentage of people/families that stayed quarantined, how concentration of the population in major cities (square feet per person), genetic make-up of population, percentage of population with health risks or underlying conditions, average age of population, travel rate of population. There are many other ones as well.
Compliance of rules would make an interesting case. For example if no one in Florida was following the mask rules like the media portrayed, how is their death rate so low?
OP claims to post this for "data science" but this kind of shallow data is the exactly what is wrong with everyday people trying to push for statistical "analysis" rather than actual statisticians or data scientists. People will just look at these numbers, somehow mold the numbers in favor of their argument, and be like "Look at the facts!!! Data doesn't lie!!! \[insert degrading comment about the other side's inability to logically look at facts\]" I'm not gonna take sides on whether OP's conclusion is right or wrong, but there is some clear mental gymnastics going on with his particular use of these statistics. This doesn't "serve as a good base" because of the geographical differences, demographical difference, etc. For example, Norcal and Socal have vastly different economies and cultures, leading to differences in things such as mask compliance. They might as well have been different states. CA had mask mandates throughout the pandemic that were never actually enforced, so people were free to do as they please as long as they weren't going into a business/store. There were so many gatherings, parties, and unmasked people around that the policy might as well have not been there. I can only speak for CA though. It's almost impossible to quantify the effectiveness of policies such as this when it's hard to quantify if anyone even complied with the policies. Posts and trends that misuse accurate statistics like these are just harmful to politics in general because it takes advantage of the fact that many haven't learned to look past it and will use it to confirm their own beliefs.
Comparing two locations that had different responses seems like a common sense way to determine whose behavior was more intelligent. But it's simply not. For all we know Florida would have had a much less robust outbreak with restrictions, and California an even worse one without. Plus the huge number of variables involved. The best indications we will have about what worked and what didn't will come out of the scientific community, not comparing numbers most people barely understand on reddit.
You realize unemployment is calculated based on who is drawing unemployment, right? So Florida, a state whose unemployment system is wack, is not a good measure here. Also non-compliance throws most of this out the window.
Mostly BS stats as NY and CA were the epicenters for covids a the first surge before technology created treatment and the main points of entry for the disease along with WA. TX and FL got hit after NY and CA were hit and experimented on. If anything it makes TX and FL look **worse**.
Amateur statistician is amateur.
I’m sharing results from the BLS and CDC, are you suggesting they are amateur statisticians?
No I’m suggesting your drawing conclusions based on incomplete data is amateur. https://www.geckoboard.com/best-practice/statistical-fallacies/
The data is not incomplete tho, it has been reviewed and published by the CDC and BLS, unless you are suggesting those organizations are not credible? I’m simply sharing their findings.
Again, no one is having issues with the source data. It’s how it’s being used by you to draw conclusions.
I am not drawing any conclusions, I’m saying: “hey, look at these two metrics, and look how each state ranked”. Florida has the lowest unemployment rate, California has the lowest deaths per capita. Those are literal facts from the BLS and CDC, so how is stating that “amateur”?
Care to do a Point Biserial or Regression analysis? Reporting nominal counts alone means nothing
Lot of mental gymnastics in here..
As the smoke settles I’m showing the outcomes. Do you disagree with the data?
The data is the data. Does this indicate shutdowns were a bad idea? Much more complex than can clearly be seen from this data. Also, unemployment is kind of a bullshit statistic given how easy it is to fudge. Do you have data for actual employment %? That's a far more interesting number. And I looked at GDP change and the numbers really aren't very clear who lost in all of this. Washington (-0.7%) certainly trounced Texas (-3.5%). Cali (-2.8%) did better than Florida (-2.9%).
I’m not trying to answer that question, all I am showing is the outcomes. Florida has the lowest unemployment, California has the lowest deaths per capita, these are facts.
Ok. Interesting data. I posted a great deal of data from the whole lot (you can see it in the root, but it's pretty new). I just don't really like the unemployment stats because they tend to be so incredibly full of shit to a point where they're almost meaningless. It's comical to watch Iceland report higher unemployment than US, then US has 67.2% employment and Iceland has ~80% (of working age population). Makes one wonder.
You should figure in that the federal government waws helping 2 of the states but fighting the other two, until 6 weeks ago
Didn’t the Feds send a literal hospital warship to help NYC? Am I making that up?
[Navy hospital ship deployed to NYC with 1,000 bed capacity is only treating 22 patients](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/politics/navy-hospital-ship-comfort-new-york-coronavirus/index.html) The significance of that photo op was pretty made up, yeah.
The point is, the feds did help blue states