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I think the reason that HN, Reddit et al. have this impression is that state policies in conservative states are explicitly less restrictive than those in less

I think the reason that HN, Reddit et al. have this impression is that state policies in conservative states are explicitly less restrictive than those in less conservative states. Florida just removed all stadium event attendance limits, for example. Within any given state there are all kinds of political beliefs and economic situations that may be more or less correlated with spread, but state governance is a very big variable.

umanwizard 6y ago
Is there any evidence that level of restriction correlates with severity of outbreaks, though?
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  I mean, this seems to be the basic understanding of every single epidemiologist and public health expert, and also correlates with everything we know about the physical mechanism of how COVID spreads.
  - ars 6y ago
    To me it seems like a covid infection is inevitable. You can delay it, but if you look at the state-by-state figures: states that successfully delayed for a while eventually got hit, states that got hit did not get additional infections. I get the idea of flatten the curve but states that already got hit hard don't really have any reason to impose additional restrictions they wouldn't do anything.
ars 6y ago
And yet New York and California, both states with primarily liberal policies, have more cases than anyone else. It's pretty obvious to people watching that the impression was created by liberal media that just wants to bash conservatives. A cursory check of the numbers shows that it has no basis in reality.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  California is roughly the median state in terms of total per capita cases at this point. Top 5 states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, North Dakota, Alabama
  - username90 6y ago
    California under reports deaths quite a lot though, they are much worse at reporting deaths than average for USA. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronaviru...
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      I was using COVID case data, not COVID deaths. In any event TX, NJ, and FL all have similar reported COVID deaths, but CA has fewer excess deaths than TX or NJ. Some of that is probably due to e.g. reduced automotive mortalities under more stringent lockdown, but I don't think the data you posted indicats that CA is e.g. worse than the other 3 states at reporting COVID deaths (otherwise we would see a much higher excess death count in CA compared to those 3 states).

umanwizard 6y ago

Is there any evidence that level of restriction correlates with severity of outbreaks, though?

matthewdgreen 6y ago
I mean, this seems to be the basic understanding of every single epidemiologist and public health expert, and also correlates with everything we know about the physical mechanism of how COVID spreads.
- ars 6y ago
  To me it seems like a covid infection is inevitable. You can delay it, but if you look at the state-by-state figures: states that successfully delayed for a while eventually got hit, states that got hit did not get additional infections. I get the idea of flatten the curve but states that already got hit hard don't really have any reason to impose additional restrictions they wouldn't do anything.

ars 6y ago

And yet New York and California, both states with primarily liberal policies, have more cases than anyone else. It's pretty obvious to people watching that the impression was created by liberal media that just wants to bash conservatives. A cursory check of the numbers shows that it has no basis in reality.

aidenn0 6y ago
California is roughly the median state in terms of total per capita cases at this point. Top 5 states: Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, North Dakota, Alabama
- username90 6y ago
  California under reports deaths quite a lot though, they are much worse at reporting deaths than average for USA. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronaviru...
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    I was using COVID case data, not COVID deaths. In any event TX, NJ, and FL all have similar reported COVID deaths, but CA has fewer excess deaths than TX or NJ. Some of that is probably due to e.g. reduced automotive mortalities under more stringent lockdown, but I don't think the data you posted indicats that CA is e.g. worse than the other 3 states at reporting COVID deaths (otherwise we would see a much higher excess death count in CA compared to those 3 states).