4 ms·

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

by ars 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
    Florida was hit way earlier. You can see that from the excess mortality graphs here [1]. Here's a cumulative death per capita graph for 5 states that illustrate 5 different patterns [2]. Most states followed one of these patterns. There is the "New York" pattern: densely populated states with a large elderly population. Hit very hard very early with a very high death rate, but after a couple of months got a handle on it and from then on was about average. There is the "Washington" pattern: a fairly steady rise in deaths per capita, never quite under control but never really out of hand either. The "Florida": like Washington for the first 3 or 4 months, then shifts to a more rapid growth, and pretty much stays there. The "California": 3 or 4 months like Washington, the starts to Florida but gets the rate back down, then spends another 3 or 4 months like Washington (but shifted up because of the burp at 3 or 4 months), but then loses it in the third wave almost catching up to Florida. The "South Dakota": low population low density state that with reasonable precautions should do better than Washington, but by working really hard to ignore it manage to end up with high numbers. Use the drop down to flip that graph from total deaths to total cases, and South Dakota is even more striking. Flip to new cases or new deaths 1 week averages to compare how they all are doing currently. Florida's currently running about 3-4 times the new cases as California, and about 50% more new deaths. (Change the highlight dropdown from "All Highlight & All Current" to "All Current" to make it easier to see the latest values). It will be interesting to see how vaccination will affect this. With the more easily transmittable variants becoming more common, which also seem to hit younger people more, I've seen the estimates from what we need for herd immunity go up to 80-90% from the early 70% estimates for the original variant. Overall, there are enough people who say that they will not get vaccinated to make it unlikely that the US can reach that, especially if it turns out to be 90% needed. However, those people are not uniformly distributed among the states. I would not be surprised if in a half a year we end up with two kinds of states: those where it is fully under control due to herd immunity and life has largely returned to normal, and those where it is still sickening and killing a lot of people. [1] https://www.usmortality.com/ https://www.usmortality.com/ [2] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-normalized&highlight=Florida&show=highlight-only&y=highlight&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=California%2CWashington%2CNew%20York%2CSouth%20Dakota#states-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-...

by ars 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
  Florida was hit way earlier. You can see that from the excess mortality graphs here [1]. Here's a cumulative death per capita graph for 5 states that illustrate 5 different patterns [2]. Most states followed one of these patterns. There is the "New York" pattern: densely populated states with a large elderly population. Hit very hard very early with a very high death rate, but after a couple of months got a handle on it and from then on was about average. There is the "Washington" pattern: a fairly steady rise in deaths per capita, never quite under control but never really out of hand either. The "Florida": like Washington for the first 3 or 4 months, then shifts to a more rapid growth, and pretty much stays there. The "California": 3 or 4 months like Washington, the starts to Florida but gets the rate back down, then spends another 3 or 4 months like Washington (but shifted up because of the burp at 3 or 4 months), but then loses it in the third wave almost catching up to Florida. The "South Dakota": low population low density state that with reasonable precautions should do better than Washington, but by working really hard to ignore it manage to end up with high numbers. Use the drop down to flip that graph from total deaths to total cases, and South Dakota is even more striking. Flip to new cases or new deaths 1 week averages to compare how they all are doing currently. Florida's currently running about 3-4 times the new cases as California, and about 50% more new deaths. (Change the highlight dropdown from "All Highlight & All Current" to "All Current" to make it easier to see the latest values). It will be interesting to see how vaccination will affect this. With the more easily transmittable variants becoming more common, which also seem to hit younger people more, I've seen the estimates from what we need for herd immunity go up to 80-90% from the early 70% estimates for the original variant. Overall, there are enough people who say that they will not get vaccinated to make it unlikely that the US can reach that, especially if it turns out to be 90% needed. However, those people are not uniformly distributed among the states. I would not be surprised if in a half a year we end up with two kinds of states: those where it is fully under control due to herd immunity and life has largely returned to normal, and those where it is still sickening and killing a lot of people. [1] https://www.usmortality.com/ https://www.usmortality.com/ [2] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-normalized&highlight=Florida&show=highlight-only&y=highlight&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=California%2CWashington%2CNew%20York%2CSouth%20Dakota#states-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-...