7 ms·

It looks like Florida is two shades "better" than California in the diagram, which would put the total Florida death rate as better than California. That would

It looks like Florida is two shades "better" than California in the diagram, which would put the total Florida death rate as better than California. That would be interesting because Florida did almost no lockdown. How could that be?

bpodgursky 5y ago
Florida aggressively locked down visitor access to nursing homes pretty early on, which is where the vast majority of deaths happen. Wearing masks on beaches and in restaurants etc may slightly impact the case count but really doesn't impact mortality in the same way that an outbreak in a care home does.
- nradov 5y ago
  Is there any reliable evidence that wearing masks on beaches even impacts the case count? Data from actual contact tracing seems to indicate that outdoor transmission is close to zero.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Yeah, I didn't feel like getting into that particular battle, but should have been more explicit; wearing masks outdoors has 0 impact on anything.
- pvarangot 5y ago
  I'm not sure where I read about this but Florida also did better in prisons.
nostromo 5y ago
WHO has been consistent about being anti-lockdown during all of Covid. There's limited evidence they work more than a short-term delay tactic and cause tremendous harm.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  I thought super hard, but localized and short term work the best? Seems most countries made only half hearted efforts.
- vkou 5y ago
  Explain China, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, and Korea. Not all of those countries are islands (The UK is one, and you may note that it's not on the list.) But all of those countries instituted short, hard lockdowns, and relaxed them after bringing local cases to zero. Around here, we institute half-assed lockdowns, that are lifted when enough people complain about them (only to come back, as cases surge). Maybe that's why they don't work for us - because we are politically and socially incapable of dealing with even a few weeks of hardship.
  - zhaksbs 5y ago
    China literally welded people in their homes. They probably lied about their numbers. New Zeland, and Australia had few cases when they did lock down, and are islands. Korea has a very disciplined population compared to the West. Really you should be comparing the US to Europe. The EU didnt do much better, but was far more draconian. Or within the states. But anyway, i never know if people are serious when they propose the China or Australian model. Those were brutal and Im glad to be voting for a constitutional amendment next week to limit the governor's lockdown authority.
    - vkou 5y ago
      > But anyway, i never know if people are serious when they propose the China or Australian model. Those were brutal and Im glad to be voting for a constitutional amendment next week to limit the governor's lockdown authority. I never know if people are serious when they suggest that a few hundred thousand dead is a worthwhile footgun-sacrifice to escape the draconian rule to which Australians and New Zealanders were subjected to over the past year. I'm generally a bit leery of ideological arguments that necessitate sacrificing those numbers of people for some intangible, abstract good. But if we are going to go down that road, can I get a say in which people we will get to sacrifice to meet that ideological objective?
spaetzleesser 5y ago
That's what's confusing. It's really not clear what works and what doesn't. Germany and India did well until they didn't. Maybe all hell will break loose in Florida soon. What I don't get that people who don't want lockdowns also oppose masking and other measures. Why not try to keep things open but also strongly support masking just to be sure?
ddingus 5y ago
One of the people I know who died, did so after traveling to Florida where they did catch covid, return home and died 40 some days later on a ventilator. Maybe travel in and out of Florida is fluid enough to explain it to some degree.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Teknoman117 5y ago
  > did so after traveling to Florida to catch covid uh, what? I don't understand why anyone would willingly try to catch a disease... (get your kids the chickenpox vaccine, don't do those chickenpox parties if those still exist. The vaccine drastically reduces the occurrence shingles later in life. I'm a bit envious that my younger sisters got it, but I got chickenpox as a child. Seeing it flare up in my dad every 18 months doesn't give me hope).
  - gizmo686 5y ago
    FYI, if you have had chickenpox, you can get a shingles vaccine https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/in...
    - Teknoman117 5y ago
      > Studies show that more than 99% of Americans 40 years and older have had chickenpox, even if they don’t remember having the disease. I'm a little surprised that the quoted age of most Americans having it is not less than that. The chickenpox vaccine was only authorized for use in the US in 1995 (I was born a bit before that, my siblings after that). That would make everyone 28 or older at least 2 years old before the vaccine came out in the US, which is the most likely age people got it. (Assuming that immigrants in the window of 1988 to 1995 from nations who authorized in that period do not make up a substantial fraction of the present US population).
  - ojbyrne 5y ago
Jtsummers 5y ago
There are two images you could be referring to. Figure 5: The (estimated) ratio of reported versus total deaths. It appears from it that FL was more accurate in their reported numbers than CA. That has absolutely nothing to do with lockdowns. Figure 7: The cumulative deaths, where FL and CA are the same color (that is, in the same range of cumulative deaths). Either way, neither indicates that FL's death rate was better than CA's. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi... Shows that FL has a higher death rate than CA. Though if you take the adjustment from this paper into consideration, then CA's would be worse.
arberx 5y ago
You can't compare stats unfortunatly. Every state had different policies. In Florida, where a vast amount of people go to vacation, out of town covid cases were not counted.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sct202 5y ago
I was in Florida for a good part last year, and it was pretty similar to how things were in Illinois, as a lot of response was left to the local authorities and a lot of people distanced themselves without needing laws to tell them to do so. The biggest difference was that there was more indoor dining and some public schools were in person.
tidydata 5y ago
I think you’re talking about Figure 5 which is the ratio of total to reported COVID related deaths. This would mean that CA underreported COVID related deaths compared to Florida. Figure 7, the cumulative total death rate, is probably more relevant to the point you’re trying to make, in which case FL and CA are in the same bin. One conclusion you might draw is that the effectiveness of lockdowns cannot be inferred from this single map.
- makomk 5y ago
  If California did underreport Covid-related deaths compared to Florida, that in itself would be interesting because endless column inches were spent on claims that Florida was underreporting its Covid deaths as part of a cover-up by its evil right-wing leaders and we definitely didn't see nearly so many claims that California was doing this.
  - username90 5y ago
    Nobody benefits from bringing it up though, Democrats don't want to look bad and Republicans want to downplay the effects of covid.
  - tidydata 5y ago
    What do you stand to gain by spreading political narratives even more? It doesn’t matter what side they say they’re on. Take, for instance, the democratic governor of NY, among the biggest culprits of hiding reporting on deaths. What’s the point? Maybe your problem is more with the media than any side which they defined.
ars 5y ago
Maybe lockdown is not as effective as people think - not for deaths anyway (I'm sure it keeps case numbers down). For deaths it seems by far the most important is not lockdown, but rather protecting elderly. So maybe Florida prioritized that, and didn't spend effort on lockdown, while California prioritized lockdown thinking it would also help elderly.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Or, maybe California was hit earlier, having a greater share of its total cases relatively early in the pandemic and geographically concentrated, meaning more overwhelmed hospitals and more use of early-pandemic treatment protocols that both overused ventilation based on generic protocols not tuned to COVID’ behavior and lacked more effective treatments developed during the pandemic. (I mean, that definitely happened, but I haven’t seen analysis quantifying the significance of the total contribution.) There’s a whole lot of omitted confounding variables in the “compare aggregate totals and jump to policy conclusions” games people are playing.
  - orangecat 5y ago
    Or, maybe California was hit earlier Most of California's deaths occurred in a wave from January to March of 2021, while Florida had their first wave in the summer of 2020. (https://linqbymarsh.com/blueicustominsights/covid-insights https://linqbymarsh.com/blueicustominsights/covid-insights is good for historical data like this). There’s a whole lot of omitted confounding variables in the “compare aggregate totals and jump to policy conclusions” games people are playing. Very true, but the lack of clear correlation between level of restrictions and Covid outcomes is at least some evidence against lockdowns.
  - ars 5y ago
    From what I remember, Florida and California were hit at the same time, but California went on and on and on, while Florida somehow ended. Maybe I can find graphs.
    - tzs 5y ago
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
When ranked by COVID deaths per capita, Sweden is #27: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... We should be concluding that lockdown and masks leads to more deaths, not less (or at the very least that they are an unjustifiably expensive public health intervention), and begin rolling back all restrictions immediately.
- sofixa 5y ago
  You can't compare countries like that. People live very differently in Sweden and India; the healthcare system is different, and so is climate, population density and distribution, customs ( e.g. in France people used to kiss on the cheek when meeting, including for the first time), etc. It would make more sense to compare similar countries, and Sweden is drastically worse than any its neighbours. Not only that, they changed course and added tougher restrictions than originally, so they themselves realised it doesn't work to fo nothing. Why do people still ignore that?
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Sweden is not drastically worse than Denmark. [1] [1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/TedPetrou/status/1390340398699192320 https://mobile.twitter.com/TedPetrou/status/1390340398699192....
  - username90 5y ago
    Sweden had a couple of days living lost per capita more than its neighbours last year, hardly a catastrophe. Maybe it was worth it for them, maybe not, but it is really hard to argue that the difference is so large that Sweden was objectively worse. If you argue about healthcare reforms overall then sweden does much better than Finland and Denmark, as expected lifespan was still much longer even when covid was at its worst. So a Sweden with covid every single year is still better off than Finland and Denmark without covid. Likely they could do better if they implemented some of Swedens others healthcare reforms rather than fight covid.
- retrac 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
digsy 5y ago
A lot of people in Florida ignored the Governors advice and self-locked down. So there's no real way to know what the impact of lockdowns were in Florida.
seppin 5y ago
> How could that be? Florida SWAT raided the home of the person trying to publish the real numbers https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55230764 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55230764

bpodgursky 5y ago

Florida aggressively locked down visitor access to nursing homes pretty early on, which is where the vast majority of deaths happen. Wearing masks on beaches and in restaurants etc may slightly impact the case count but really doesn't impact mortality in the same way that an outbreak in a care home does.

nradov 5y ago
Is there any reliable evidence that wearing masks on beaches even impacts the case count? Data from actual contact tracing seems to indicate that outdoor transmission is close to zero.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Yeah, I didn't feel like getting into that particular battle, but should have been more explicit; wearing masks outdoors has 0 impact on anything.
pvarangot 5y ago
I'm not sure where I read about this but Florida also did better in prisons.

nostromo 5y ago

WHO has been consistent about being anti-lockdown during all of Covid. There's limited evidence they work more than a short-term delay tactic and cause tremendous harm.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
I thought super hard, but localized and short term work the best? Seems most countries made only half hearted efforts.
vkou 5y ago
Explain China, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, and Korea. Not all of those countries are islands (The UK is one, and you may note that it's not on the list.) But all of those countries instituted short, hard lockdowns, and relaxed them after bringing local cases to zero. Around here, we institute half-assed lockdowns, that are lifted when enough people complain about them (only to come back, as cases surge). Maybe that's why they don't work for us - because we are politically and socially incapable of dealing with even a few weeks of hardship.
- zhaksbs 5y ago
  China literally welded people in their homes. They probably lied about their numbers. New Zeland, and Australia had few cases when they did lock down, and are islands. Korea has a very disciplined population compared to the West. Really you should be comparing the US to Europe. The EU didnt do much better, but was far more draconian. Or within the states. But anyway, i never know if people are serious when they propose the China or Australian model. Those were brutal and Im glad to be voting for a constitutional amendment next week to limit the governor's lockdown authority.
  - vkou 5y ago
    > But anyway, i never know if people are serious when they propose the China or Australian model. Those were brutal and Im glad to be voting for a constitutional amendment next week to limit the governor's lockdown authority. I never know if people are serious when they suggest that a few hundred thousand dead is a worthwhile footgun-sacrifice to escape the draconian rule to which Australians and New Zealanders were subjected to over the past year. I'm generally a bit leery of ideological arguments that necessitate sacrificing those numbers of people for some intangible, abstract good. But if we are going to go down that road, can I get a say in which people we will get to sacrifice to meet that ideological objective?

spaetzleesser 5y ago

That's what's confusing. It's really not clear what works and what doesn't. Germany and India did well until they didn't. Maybe all hell will break loose in Florida soon. What I don't get that people who don't want lockdowns also oppose masking and other measures. Why not try to keep things open but also strongly support masking just to be sure?

ddingus 5y ago

One of the people I know who died, did so after traveling to Florida where they did catch covid, return home and died 40 some days later on a ventilator. Maybe travel in and out of Florida is fluid enough to explain it to some degree.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Teknoman117 5y ago
> did so after traveling to Florida to catch covid uh, what? I don't understand why anyone would willingly try to catch a disease... (get your kids the chickenpox vaccine, don't do those chickenpox parties if those still exist. The vaccine drastically reduces the occurrence shingles later in life. I'm a bit envious that my younger sisters got it, but I got chickenpox as a child. Seeing it flare up in my dad every 18 months doesn't give me hope).
- gizmo686 5y ago
  FYI, if you have had chickenpox, you can get a shingles vaccine https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/in...
  - Teknoman117 5y ago
    > Studies show that more than 99% of Americans 40 years and older have had chickenpox, even if they don’t remember having the disease. I'm a little surprised that the quoted age of most Americans having it is not less than that. The chickenpox vaccine was only authorized for use in the US in 1995 (I was born a bit before that, my siblings after that). That would make everyone 28 or older at least 2 years old before the vaccine came out in the US, which is the most likely age people got it. (Assuming that immigrants in the window of 1988 to 1995 from nations who authorized in that period do not make up a substantial fraction of the present US population).
- ojbyrne 5y ago

Jtsummers 5y ago

There are two images you could be referring to. Figure 5: The (estimated) ratio of reported versus total deaths. It appears from it that FL was more accurate in their reported numbers than CA. That has absolutely nothing to do with lockdowns. Figure 7: The cumulative deaths, where FL and CA are the same color (that is, in the same range of cumulative deaths). Either way, neither indicates that FL's death rate was better than CA's. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi... Shows that FL has a higher death rate than CA. Though if you take the adjustment from this paper into consideration, then CA's would be worse.

arberx 5y ago

You can't compare stats unfortunatly. Every state had different policies. In Florida, where a vast amount of people go to vacation, out of town covid cases were not counted.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sct202 5y ago

I was in Florida for a good part last year, and it was pretty similar to how things were in Illinois, as a lot of response was left to the local authorities and a lot of people distanced themselves without needing laws to tell them to do so. The biggest difference was that there was more indoor dining and some public schools were in person.

tidydata 5y ago

I think you’re talking about Figure 5 which is the ratio of total to reported COVID related deaths. This would mean that CA underreported COVID related deaths compared to Florida. Figure 7, the cumulative total death rate, is probably more relevant to the point you’re trying to make, in which case FL and CA are in the same bin. One conclusion you might draw is that the effectiveness of lockdowns cannot be inferred from this single map.

makomk 5y ago
If California did underreport Covid-related deaths compared to Florida, that in itself would be interesting because endless column inches were spent on claims that Florida was underreporting its Covid deaths as part of a cover-up by its evil right-wing leaders and we definitely didn't see nearly so many claims that California was doing this.
- username90 5y ago
  Nobody benefits from bringing it up though, Democrats don't want to look bad and Republicans want to downplay the effects of covid.
- tidydata 5y ago
  What do you stand to gain by spreading political narratives even more? It doesn’t matter what side they say they’re on. Take, for instance, the democratic governor of NY, among the biggest culprits of hiding reporting on deaths. What’s the point? Maybe your problem is more with the media than any side which they defined.

ars 5y ago

Maybe lockdown is not as effective as people think - not for deaths anyway (I'm sure it keeps case numbers down). For deaths it seems by far the most important is not lockdown, but rather protecting elderly. So maybe Florida prioritized that, and didn't spend effort on lockdown, while California prioritized lockdown thinking it would also help elderly.

dragonwriter 5y ago
Or, maybe California was hit earlier, having a greater share of its total cases relatively early in the pandemic and geographically concentrated, meaning more overwhelmed hospitals and more use of early-pandemic treatment protocols that both overused ventilation based on generic protocols not tuned to COVID’ behavior and lacked more effective treatments developed during the pandemic. (I mean, that definitely happened, but I haven’t seen analysis quantifying the significance of the total contribution.) There’s a whole lot of omitted confounding variables in the “compare aggregate totals and jump to policy conclusions” games people are playing.
- orangecat 5y ago
  Or, maybe California was hit earlier Most of California's deaths occurred in a wave from January to March of 2021, while Florida had their first wave in the summer of 2020. (https://linqbymarsh.com/blueicustominsights/covid-insights https://linqbymarsh.com/blueicustominsights/covid-insights is good for historical data like this). There’s a whole lot of omitted confounding variables in the “compare aggregate totals and jump to policy conclusions” games people are playing. Very true, but the lack of clear correlation between level of restrictions and Covid outcomes is at least some evidence against lockdowns.
- ars 5y ago
  From what I remember, Florida and California were hit at the same time, but California went on and on and on, while Florida somehow ended. Maybe I can find graphs.
  - tzs 5y ago

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

When ranked by COVID deaths per capita, Sweden is #27: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat... We should be concluding that lockdown and masks leads to more deaths, not less (or at the very least that they are an unjustifiably expensive public health intervention), and begin rolling back all restrictions immediately.

sofixa 5y ago
You can't compare countries like that. People live very differently in Sweden and India; the healthcare system is different, and so is climate, population density and distribution, customs ( e.g. in France people used to kiss on the cheek when meeting, including for the first time), etc. It would make more sense to compare similar countries, and Sweden is drastically worse than any its neighbours. Not only that, they changed course and added tougher restrictions than originally, so they themselves realised it doesn't work to fo nothing. Why do people still ignore that?
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Sweden is not drastically worse than Denmark. [1] [1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/TedPetrou/status/1390340398699192320 https://mobile.twitter.com/TedPetrou/status/1390340398699192....
- username90 5y ago
  Sweden had a couple of days living lost per capita more than its neighbours last year, hardly a catastrophe. Maybe it was worth it for them, maybe not, but it is really hard to argue that the difference is so large that Sweden was objectively worse. If you argue about healthcare reforms overall then sweden does much better than Finland and Denmark, as expected lifespan was still much longer even when covid was at its worst. So a Sweden with covid every single year is still better off than Finland and Denmark without covid. Likely they could do better if they implemented some of Swedens others healthcare reforms rather than fight covid.
retrac 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

digsy 5y ago

A lot of people in Florida ignored the Governors advice and self-locked down. So there's no real way to know what the impact of lockdowns were in Florida.

seppin 5y ago

> How could that be? Florida SWAT raided the home of the person trying to publish the real numbers https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55230764 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55230764