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Death rates go hand in hand with income, obesity rate, age, and general health pre-covid among many other things. You absolutely can’t simply compare death rate

Death rates go hand in hand with income, obesity rate, age, and general health pre-covid among many other things. You absolutely can’t simply compare death rates from one state to the next that easily without controlling for variables such as age (many times more deadly for the elderly), wealth (multiple times more deadly for the poorest vs. the richest), obesity rate, weather etc etc. This is why several countries have far lower or higher deaths than other countries with very similar strategies.

jacobolus 5y ago
Death rates go hand in hand with (delayed a few weeks) unvaccinated people getting together indoors without high-quality masks, and breathing each-others’ breath. People working public-facing jobs or indoor jobs with many coworkers, taking public transit, with kids in daycare, etc. end up with a lot more inevitable inter-household exposure. And obviously people who are elderly, immune compromised, or with other health problems face (orders-of-magnitude) higher individual risk when infected. But personal choices to avoid exposure make a huge difference to the reproductive rate of the virus. And government responses providing free test capacity, mandating masks in indoor public spaces, restricting indoor dining, early in the pandemic closing gyms and schools, providing places for people to isolate away from their households, providing financial support for people unable to do their jobs safely, guaranteeing sick pay, etc., and recommendations discouraging unmasked indoor inter-household mingling make a huge difference. SF has not been perfect by any means. Something like a third of the deaths throughout the pandemic were caused by spread resulting from the relaxation of the restriction on indoor dining for a couple months in the fall of 2020. Early on the city did a poor job getting test capacity where it was most needed in low-income neighborhoods. The city could do a better job providing and encouraging the use of high quality masks. The messaging on boosters hasn’t been forceful enough. And city guidance was too slow to react to changing scientific knowledge (e.g. a 6-foot rule makes limited difference; sanitizing surfaces is useless; masks need not be mandated outdoors except maybe in dense crowds). But overall response here has been faster and more competent than almost anywhere else in the USA.

jacobolus 5y ago

Death rates go hand in hand with (delayed a few weeks) unvaccinated people getting together indoors without high-quality masks, and breathing each-others’ breath. People working public-facing jobs or indoor jobs with many coworkers, taking public transit, with kids in daycare, etc. end up with a lot more inevitable inter-household exposure. And obviously people who are elderly, immune compromised, or with other health problems face (orders-of-magnitude) higher individual risk when infected. But personal choices to avoid exposure make a huge difference to the reproductive rate of the virus. And government responses providing free test capacity, mandating masks in indoor public spaces, restricting indoor dining, early in the pandemic closing gyms and schools, providing places for people to isolate away from their households, providing financial support for people unable to do their jobs safely, guaranteeing sick pay, etc., and recommendations discouraging unmasked indoor inter-household mingling make a huge difference. SF has not been perfect by any means. Something like a third of the deaths throughout the pandemic were caused by spread resulting from the relaxation of the restriction on indoor dining for a couple months in the fall of 2020. Early on the city did a poor job getting test capacity where it was most needed in low-income neighborhoods. The city could do a better job providing and encouraging the use of high quality masks. The messaging on boosters hasn’t been forceful enough. And city guidance was too slow to react to changing scientific knowledge (e.g. a 6-foot rule makes limited difference; sanitizing surfaces is useless; masks need not be mandated outdoors except maybe in dense crowds). But overall response here has been faster and more competent than almost anywhere else in the USA.