3 ms·

Well, if you look at the data, covid outcomes in TX/FL aren't much different than CA/NY despite completely different policy routes. People in the south have be

Well, if you look at the data, covid outcomes in TX/FL aren't much different than CA/NY despite completely different policy routes. People in the south have been able to live without restriction, as if covid doesn't exist, and the result is pretty much the same. So are the authoritarian/mandate style policies doing anything meaningful to help? Obviously there are many variables to consider such as age, prevalence of obesity, density etc, but you would expect to see stark differences in outcomes if mandate/lockdown policies had a substantial impact. Somewhere along the way the covid hardliners lost the plot and continue to focus on the case counts rather than consider the holistic/multivariate model of second order effects of policy. Seems pretty unscientific to me to have a policy function with a single variable input.

tzs 5y ago
> People in the south have been able to live without restriction, as if covid doesn't exist, and the result is pretty much the same. That might have been true pre-Delta. The delta wave was about 4x worse in deaths per capita in Texas and about 7 x worse in Florida than in California or New York [1]. Overall, New York has 2 bad months at the start of the pandemic, and then has done pretty well in the subsequent months. Florida, Texas, and California have been doing worse than New York for most of the time after those first couple of months. Florida and Texas were substantially worse that California for about 2 months of the late summer 2020 wave. California was slightly worse than Texas, and Florida was the best of the 4, for a month during the early 2021 wave. This was enough to put Texas above Florida on deaths per capita, but not enough to unset California at the lowest deaths per capita of the 4. Then delta moved Florida to near New York totals and moved Texas to about 60% of the way between California and New York [2]. On other words, statistically if you survived the first two months of the pandemic and then had a choice between New York, California, Texas, and Florida until the present the chances of dying from COVID were lowest in New York. In California they were about 28% higher than New York. In Texas they were about 35% higher than in California and about 73% higher than in New York. In Florida they were about 12% higher than in Texas, 52% higher than in California, and 93% higher than New York. [1] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-normalized&highlight=California&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=New%20York%2CFlorida%2CTexas#states-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-... [2] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-normalized&highlight=California&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=New%20York%2CFlorida%2CTexas#states-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-...
- strictured 5y ago
  You're putting a lot of significance on that 'if' as if it weren't a 98.3% chance you were going to live even if you did get covid (not even taking into account differences in demographics). This is about trade-offs, and if the trade-off is living life as normal while still being in the same statistically significant bounds in regards to covid outcomes as those states that institute harsher lockdowns then it is not irrational to choose the former.

tzs 5y ago

> People in the south have been able to live without restriction, as if covid doesn't exist, and the result is pretty much the same. That might have been true pre-Delta. The delta wave was about 4x worse in deaths per capita in Texas and about 7 x worse in Florida than in California or New York [1]. Overall, New York has 2 bad months at the start of the pandemic, and then has done pretty well in the subsequent months. Florida, Texas, and California have been doing worse than New York for most of the time after those first couple of months. Florida and Texas were substantially worse that California for about 2 months of the late summer 2020 wave. California was slightly worse than Texas, and Florida was the best of the 4, for a month during the early 2021 wave. This was enough to put Texas above Florida on deaths per capita, but not enough to unset California at the lowest deaths per capita of the 4. Then delta moved Florida to near New York totals and moved Texas to about 60% of the way between California and New York [2]. On other words, statistically if you survived the first two months of the pandemic and then had a choice between New York, California, Texas, and Florida until the present the chances of dying from COVID were lowest in New York. In California they were about 28% higher than New York. In Texas they were about 35% higher than in California and about 73% higher than in New York. In Florida they were about 12% higher than in Texas, 52% higher than in California, and 93% higher than New York. [1] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-normalized&highlight=California&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths-daily-7&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=New%20York%2CFlorida%2CTexas#states-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-... [2] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-normalized&highlight=California&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=New%20York%2CFlorida%2CTexas#states-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-...

strictured 5y ago
You're putting a lot of significance on that 'if' as if it weren't a 98.3% chance you were going to live even if you did get covid (not even taking into account differences in demographics). This is about trade-offs, and if the trade-off is living life as normal while still being in the same statistically significant bounds in regards to covid outcomes as those states that institute harsher lockdowns then it is not irrational to choose the former.