6 ms·

Factor out CA, and the US is doing fairly well. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/

Factor out CA, and the US is doing fairly well. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k... All those measures that CA took that were lauded - they don't seem to be working as expected. The per capita rate in all other states is better, with only TN and AZ approaching CAs levels.

rconti 6y ago
The problem is, every few weeks there's a new "well, if you ignore this state, the US is doing really well" story. CA is still only 34th/50 per capita in infections and 40th/50 per capita in deaths. We can't exclude outliers and expect to get a useful dataset. Especially when those outliers change all the time, and exhibit the same patterns as each other.
- tomohawk 6y ago
  According to the link I provided to the CDC, CA is at 95 per 100k, which is way more than any other state at this time.
  - mkl 6y ago
    That's in the last 7 days only. Is that what you mean by "at this time"? California is doing better than most US states in the longer term, and even the "best" state long term, Vermont, seems to be worse off than most countries.
bandana 6y ago
I see many other comments in this thread saying that this was preventable, how so ? Looks like California tried a lot of things (stay at own orders, business closures etc) and they are not in a better shape than more "relaxed" states.
- raziel2701 6y ago
  Cut people a check so that they could have afforded to stay inside in a bubble.
- slg 6y ago
  A real national commitment to testing and contact tracing early on. A full lockdown which probably needed to be done at a national level since states can't restrict travel. Pay everyone to stay home. I simply don't get the "we couldn't have done anything" mindset when we see countries like South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand with deaths per capita as little as 1%-3% of what it is here.
  - jandrewrogers 6y ago
    The Federal government has severely circumscribed authority to restrict travel, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly determined it to be a fundamental Constitutional right on the same level as freedom of speech. You can’t suspend that right without narrowly tailored due process for each of 330 million Americans. (This cuts both ways — there are several things that are effectively impossible because “due process” doesn’t scale regardless of the purpose.) This is the reason no State implemented real “lockdowns”, the Supreme Court has overturned such attempts many times historically, it is settled law at this point. States actually have fewer restrictions than the Federal government in this regard. Similarly, effective contact tracing by the government is illegal in the US, ignoring that the disease was endemic before anyone even noticed. It isn’t just illegal, the US infrastructure is intentionally designed to make it extremely difficult to do at a technical implementation level, with the idea that it would hinder potential abuses. You could modify the systems to make contact tracing work, ignoring legality, but it would require at least a year of lead time to do the technical implementation. Many senior people in US government did ask about this early in the year and were repeatedly told that implementation would require a very long time both legally and technically. So they dropped the idea. No amount of “real national commitment” will address these issues, and denying that these limitations exist isn’t the basis for a constructive policy.
    - slg 6y ago
thethirdone 6y ago
CA recently is in a wave; the color from the linked page is about the new cases / capita in the last 7 days. Overall CA is doing better than the median state.
s5300 6y ago
You did a good job including the fact that some of the states that are slighty better per capita are also states that just so happen to have officials raiding the homes of people trying to ensure accurate data is transparently posted. Also the fact that some of said states are near entirely run by people who have claimed that the virus did not exist from the start. I wonder how that may affect the transparency of data we get to see... Oops, I mean, cognitive dissonance is cool.
creata 6y ago
This is statistics at its worst. How can you conclude from just the last seven days that "those measures that CA took... don't seem to be working as expected"?
dragonwriter 6y ago
> All those measures that CA took that were lauded - they don't seem to be working as expected Yes, they did. And then the subsequent widespread public rebellion by county sheriffs, who lean very strongly to the political right and to whom state law invests exclusive and largely discretionary authority for enforcement of public health orders, that they simply would not enforce any of the orders also worked exactly as expected. National media has tended to cover the state and regional public health orders, but not so much the very public announcements of non-enforcement by sheriffs. But they are extremely well distributed by local traditional and social media, and effect behavior.
- alacombe 6y ago
  > Yes, they did. Do you have a relevant study backing this assertion ? At best, we'll have a good understanding of effectiveness 10 to 15 years from now.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Do you have a relevant study backing this assertion ? The assertion is that the outcome sought by the intervention was (from context, in the short-term, before the other events mentioned in the comment) achieved; the curve was flattened in the early wave. That was the relevant expectation, and it occurred.

rconti 6y ago

The problem is, every few weeks there's a new "well, if you ignore this state, the US is doing really well" story. CA is still only 34th/50 per capita in infections and 40th/50 per capita in deaths. We can't exclude outliers and expect to get a useful dataset. Especially when those outliers change all the time, and exhibit the same patterns as each other.

tomohawk 6y ago
According to the link I provided to the CDC, CA is at 95 per 100k, which is way more than any other state at this time.
- mkl 6y ago
  That's in the last 7 days only. Is that what you mean by "at this time"? California is doing better than most US states in the longer term, and even the "best" state long term, Vermont, seems to be worse off than most countries.

bandana 6y ago

I see many other comments in this thread saying that this was preventable, how so ? Looks like California tried a lot of things (stay at own orders, business closures etc) and they are not in a better shape than more "relaxed" states.

raziel2701 6y ago
Cut people a check so that they could have afforded to stay inside in a bubble.
slg 6y ago
A real national commitment to testing and contact tracing early on. A full lockdown which probably needed to be done at a national level since states can't restrict travel. Pay everyone to stay home. I simply don't get the "we couldn't have done anything" mindset when we see countries like South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand with deaths per capita as little as 1%-3% of what it is here.
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  The Federal government has severely circumscribed authority to restrict travel, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly determined it to be a fundamental Constitutional right on the same level as freedom of speech. You can’t suspend that right without narrowly tailored due process for each of 330 million Americans. (This cuts both ways — there are several things that are effectively impossible because “due process” doesn’t scale regardless of the purpose.) This is the reason no State implemented real “lockdowns”, the Supreme Court has overturned such attempts many times historically, it is settled law at this point. States actually have fewer restrictions than the Federal government in this regard. Similarly, effective contact tracing by the government is illegal in the US, ignoring that the disease was endemic before anyone even noticed. It isn’t just illegal, the US infrastructure is intentionally designed to make it extremely difficult to do at a technical implementation level, with the idea that it would hinder potential abuses. You could modify the systems to make contact tracing work, ignoring legality, but it would require at least a year of lead time to do the technical implementation. Many senior people in US government did ask about this early in the year and were repeatedly told that implementation would require a very long time both legally and technically. So they dropped the idea. No amount of “real national commitment” will address these issues, and denying that these limitations exist isn’t the basis for a constructive policy.
  - slg 6y ago

thethirdone 6y ago

CA recently is in a wave; the color from the linked page is about the new cases / capita in the last 7 days. Overall CA is doing better than the median state.

s5300 6y ago

You did a good job including the fact that some of the states that are slighty better per capita are also states that just so happen to have officials raiding the homes of people trying to ensure accurate data is transparently posted. Also the fact that some of said states are near entirely run by people who have claimed that the virus did not exist from the start. I wonder how that may affect the transparency of data we get to see... Oops, I mean, cognitive dissonance is cool.

creata 6y ago

This is statistics at its worst. How can you conclude from just the last seven days that "those measures that CA took... don't seem to be working as expected"?

dragonwriter 6y ago

> All those measures that CA took that were lauded - they don't seem to be working as expected Yes, they did. And then the subsequent widespread public rebellion by county sheriffs, who lean very strongly to the political right and to whom state law invests exclusive and largely discretionary authority for enforcement of public health orders, that they simply would not enforce any of the orders also worked exactly as expected. National media has tended to cover the state and regional public health orders, but not so much the very public announcements of non-enforcement by sheriffs. But they are extremely well distributed by local traditional and social media, and effect behavior.

alacombe 6y ago
> Yes, they did. Do you have a relevant study backing this assertion ? At best, we'll have a good understanding of effectiveness 10 to 15 years from now.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Do you have a relevant study backing this assertion ? The assertion is that the outcome sought by the intervention was (from context, in the short-term, before the other events mentioned in the comment) achieved; the curve was flattened in the early wave. That was the relevant expectation, and it occurred.