6 ms·

Yet Florida is perfectly ok. Obviously this "8 digit body count" concept is a load of that which makes the grass grow green.

monocasa 6y ago
I would use many phrases to describe Florida's covid response, but "perfectly ok" would not be one of them.
- nradov 6y ago
  A better description of Florida would be "perfectly average". In deaths per capita they are right in the middle of US states. Obviously Florida could have done better, but many other states have done far worse. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
  - monocasa 6y ago
    The ones above Florida are either the dense area of the NY extended metro that got hit early and had trouble getting it back under control, or states ideologically aligned with Florida. Just because they're in the middle doesn't make it a good response.
    - whatthesmack 6y ago
      It also doesn't necessarily make it a bad response. But when you factor in more than simply one detail (COVID vs COVID+economy+mental health), it starts to look like a good response.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    The big, open question is why Florida and California have seen such similar case rates despite radically different approaches.
    - nostrademons 6y ago
      There's less difference than their public policies might suggest. Reportedly lots of senior citizens in Florida voluntarily social-distanced themselves from everybody. The press reported on square dancing and packed beaches, but the anecdotes I heard were that vulnerable individuals were taking things very seriously (despite the lack of restrictions) and self-quarantining away from everyone else. Meanwhile, in SoCal, basically nobody followed the mask mandates and social distancing restrictions. The rules were more like guidelines, and guidelines that were ignored. They also have a lot more problems with overcrowding, with immigrant populations that need to work, etc. So in terms of what people were actually doing, SoCal was actually engaging in significantly riskier behavior than Florida. If you compare Bay Area, where people largely did follow the mask & social distancing guidelines, with Florida or SoCal, the death rates are not the same. SF and San Mateo counties had approximately 1/3 as many deaths/1M as the U.S. (and Florida) average; Santa Clara had about 1/2 as many.
      - CryptoPunk 6y ago
        The vulnerable voluntarily self-isolating, while the less vulnerable live more normal lives, is a very desireable outcome, and much better than a blanket lockdown, which imposes restrictions on large subsections of the population which are not vulnerable.
        nostrademons 6y ago
        Depends on your threat model. If you're worried about old people dying from COVID directly, then yes, it makes sense. If you're worried about the hospitals being overwhelmed and then people dying from car crashes and heart attacks, then targeted self-isolation of vulnerable people isn't going to help as much. As a healthy 30-something, my chance of dying from COVID is about 1:3000, about 300x better than an 80-year-old. However, my chance of being hospitalized from COVID is about 3%, which is only about 7x better than the 80-year-old. The hospitals were overwhelmed, here (Bay Area) and in many other cities. Even now (2 months after the Christmas/January surge) Santa Clara County still has 21% of its ICU beds taken up by COVID patients. U.S. life expectancy dropped by a full year during COVID. We were concerned about the 0.1 year declines in 2016-2018 from the opioid epidemic (which did affect young people), and this was 10x that. It'll be interesting to see how all-cause mortality has varied among different states in 2020-2021.
JeremyBanks 6y ago
it's okay because only one in one thousand people have died
- jansan 6y ago
  While on average, every year roughly 1 in 85 people dies.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Indeed, a 1 in 1000 chance of dying isn’t worth upending civilization over. You get fewer than 100 years on this earth regardless, to put it in perspective.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    Thinking back to other periods of world history I learned about in school, I can easily see how people managed to rationalize away hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths in the name of convenience.
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      Can you elaborate?

monocasa 6y ago

I would use many phrases to describe Florida's covid response, but "perfectly ok" would not be one of them.

nradov 6y ago
A better description of Florida would be "perfectly average". In deaths per capita they are right in the middle of US states. Obviously Florida could have done better, but many other states have done far worse. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
- monocasa 6y ago
  The ones above Florida are either the dense area of the NY extended metro that got hit early and had trouble getting it back under control, or states ideologically aligned with Florida. Just because they're in the middle doesn't make it a good response.
  - whatthesmack 6y ago
    It also doesn't necessarily make it a bad response. But when you factor in more than simply one detail (COVID vs COVID+economy+mental health), it starts to look like a good response.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  The big, open question is why Florida and California have seen such similar case rates despite radically different approaches.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    There's less difference than their public policies might suggest. Reportedly lots of senior citizens in Florida voluntarily social-distanced themselves from everybody. The press reported on square dancing and packed beaches, but the anecdotes I heard were that vulnerable individuals were taking things very seriously (despite the lack of restrictions) and self-quarantining away from everyone else. Meanwhile, in SoCal, basically nobody followed the mask mandates and social distancing restrictions. The rules were more like guidelines, and guidelines that were ignored. They also have a lot more problems with overcrowding, with immigrant populations that need to work, etc. So in terms of what people were actually doing, SoCal was actually engaging in significantly riskier behavior than Florida. If you compare Bay Area, where people largely did follow the mask & social distancing guidelines, with Florida or SoCal, the death rates are not the same. SF and San Mateo counties had approximately 1/3 as many deaths/1M as the U.S. (and Florida) average; Santa Clara had about 1/2 as many.
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      The vulnerable voluntarily self-isolating, while the less vulnerable live more normal lives, is a very desireable outcome, and much better than a blanket lockdown, which imposes restrictions on large subsections of the population which are not vulnerable.
      - nostrademons 6y ago
        Depends on your threat model. If you're worried about old people dying from COVID directly, then yes, it makes sense. If you're worried about the hospitals being overwhelmed and then people dying from car crashes and heart attacks, then targeted self-isolation of vulnerable people isn't going to help as much. As a healthy 30-something, my chance of dying from COVID is about 1:3000, about 300x better than an 80-year-old. However, my chance of being hospitalized from COVID is about 3%, which is only about 7x better than the 80-year-old. The hospitals were overwhelmed, here (Bay Area) and in many other cities. Even now (2 months after the Christmas/January surge) Santa Clara County still has 21% of its ICU beds taken up by COVID patients. U.S. life expectancy dropped by a full year during COVID. We were concerned about the 0.1 year declines in 2016-2018 from the opioid epidemic (which did affect young people), and this was 10x that. It'll be interesting to see how all-cause mortality has varied among different states in 2020-2021.

JeremyBanks 6y ago

it's okay because only one in one thousand people have died

jansan 6y ago
While on average, every year roughly 1 in 85 people dies.
umanwizard 6y ago
Indeed, a 1 in 1000 chance of dying isn’t worth upending civilization over. You get fewer than 100 years on this earth regardless, to put it in perspective.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  Thinking back to other periods of world history I learned about in school, I can easily see how people managed to rationalize away hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths in the name of convenience.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Can you elaborate?