5 ms·

https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/25/stanford-professor-jay-bhattacharya-joins-ron-desantis-2024-presidential-campaign-kickoff/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/0

https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/25/stanford-professor-jay-bhattacharya-joins-ron-desantis-2024-presidential-campaign-kickoff/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/05/25/stanford-professor-jay-... > During the live broadcast, Bhattacharya said it was “an absolute honor” to work with Desantis and praised what he described as DeSantis’ abilities to make decisions on COVID-19-related issues despite criticism. He expressed support for DeSantis’ rolling back certain pandemic-induced restrictions, including school closures, saying, “Governor, you did the right thing when you opened the schools.” https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article274876701.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article27487670... > From March 2020, when the pandemic began, through March 22, 2023, Florida recorded 7,542,869 COVID-19 cases and 87,141 deaths, the 12th highest rate in cases and deaths per 100,000 people among the 50 states and Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. I'll be honest, if Jay Battacharya thinks Florida did a great job handling covid, i'm not sure i trust his judgement!

orblivion 3y ago
My understanding is that Florida did about average if you adjust by age (lots of elderly people there). Couple that with keeping the economy much more open and schools shutting down a lot less (if at all?), it makes it a lot better than average. That's the argument. With that in mind, I can't find a link to back up the claim about age-adjusted death rate ranking. I thought I saw one before. I found this one that goes by year: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_final/COVID19.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_... Looks like they did badly in 2021 and well in 2020. Ideally I'd want to look across all years, since that's the "when it's all said and done" question.
benjaminwootton 3y ago
They weren’t a particular outlier, which is notable considering how old their population is. And compatible with New York which through the kitchen sink at Covid. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...
- orblivion 3y ago
  I dunno, 404 where the worst was 455 doesn't seem great either. I'd be curious what the "age-adjusted death rates" look like (whatever the unit of such a metric might be?)
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    I don't have the age-adjusted death rates, but FL is 5th in the nation in terms of median age (42.2). This is over a decade older than the youngest state (UT: 31.1). [1] 1: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/median-age-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/median-age-...
    - kelnos 3y ago
      Oh that's surprising, I expected the median age to be much higher for FL. It sounds like FL's population, while older than most, isn't really that old in absolute terms?
      - lmm 3y ago
        You have to add a whole lot of old people to move the median much. I suspect the mean would tell another story.
      - slaw 3y ago
        What really matters is not median age, but how many people are over 65.
        gnicholas 3y ago
        Why did this get downvoted? If you're just looking at death rate, it's absolutely true. Over 3/4 of all COVID deaths in the US were aged 65+. [1] Lots of other people got COVID, and some of them became seriously ill or died (mostly over 50). But the supermajority of Americans who died were over 65. 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...
gnicholas 3y ago
Dr. Vinay Prasad, a self-professed Bernie supporter, recently did a video [1] on DeSantis' COVID policy. His conclusion was that DeSantis was among one of the top governors in the country, and "near the top" of all the political leaders in the world. The video discusses vaccination policy, mask mandates, school reopenings, and death rates. The TLDR is that policies that different governments enacted did not seem to have much impact on death rates, and that therefore what was given up (in terms of closed schools/businesses/etc.) was somewhat in vain. I think he should have spent a little time on non-death impacts, such as long COVID, which seem to be more prevalent in people who got COVID pre-vaccine. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYNV8AP0EJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYNV8AP0EJU
dekhn 3y ago
Most people seem to criticize the Great Barrington authors because of whom they chose to associate with, rather than their actual position on medicine and science. Even as somebody who frequently shakes his head at Florida, they really didn't do significantly worse in a way you could pin on the governer's policies. The entire covid cycle was a learning process and people frequently made useless comparisons, such as rank-ordering states that have very different demographics. Let's all be intellectually honest here and push back on some of the common post-COVID tropes.
spookthesunset 3y ago
> I'll be honest, if Jay Battacharya thinks Florida did a great job handling covid, i'm not sure i trust his judgement! According to the science and data, Florida did no better or worse than basically anywhere else. I dunno what else to say. Y'all got lied to.

orblivion 3y ago

My understanding is that Florida did about average if you adjust by age (lots of elderly people there). Couple that with keeping the economy much more open and schools shutting down a lot less (if at all?), it makes it a lot better than average. That's the argument. With that in mind, I can't find a link to back up the claim about age-adjusted death rate ranking. I thought I saw one before. I found this one that goes by year: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_final/COVID19.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/covid19_mortality_... Looks like they did badly in 2021 and well in 2020. Ideally I'd want to look across all years, since that's the "when it's all said and done" question.

benjaminwootton 3y ago

They weren’t a particular outlier, which is notable considering how old their population is. And compatible with New York which through the kitchen sink at Covid. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

orblivion 3y ago
I dunno, 404 where the worst was 455 doesn't seem great either. I'd be curious what the "age-adjusted death rates" look like (whatever the unit of such a metric might be?)
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I don't have the age-adjusted death rates, but FL is 5th in the nation in terms of median age (42.2). This is over a decade older than the youngest state (UT: 31.1). [1] 1: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/median-age-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/median-age-...
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Oh that's surprising, I expected the median age to be much higher for FL. It sounds like FL's population, while older than most, isn't really that old in absolute terms?
    - lmm 3y ago
      You have to add a whole lot of old people to move the median much. I suspect the mean would tell another story.
    - slaw 3y ago
      What really matters is not median age, but how many people are over 65.
      - gnicholas 3y ago
        Why did this get downvoted? If you're just looking at death rate, it's absolutely true. Over 3/4 of all COVID deaths in the US were aged 65+. [1] Lots of other people got COVID, and some of them became seriously ill or died (mostly over 50). But the supermajority of Americans who died were over 65. 1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

gnicholas 3y ago

Dr. Vinay Prasad, a self-professed Bernie supporter, recently did a video [1] on DeSantis' COVID policy. His conclusion was that DeSantis was among one of the top governors in the country, and "near the top" of all the political leaders in the world. The video discusses vaccination policy, mask mandates, school reopenings, and death rates. The TLDR is that policies that different governments enacted did not seem to have much impact on death rates, and that therefore what was given up (in terms of closed schools/businesses/etc.) was somewhat in vain. I think he should have spent a little time on non-death impacts, such as long COVID, which seem to be more prevalent in people who got COVID pre-vaccine. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYNV8AP0EJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYNV8AP0EJU

dekhn 3y ago

Most people seem to criticize the Great Barrington authors because of whom they chose to associate with, rather than their actual position on medicine and science. Even as somebody who frequently shakes his head at Florida, they really didn't do significantly worse in a way you could pin on the governer's policies. The entire covid cycle was a learning process and people frequently made useless comparisons, such as rank-ordering states that have very different demographics. Let's all be intellectually honest here and push back on some of the common post-COVID tropes.

spookthesunset 3y ago

> I'll be honest, if Jay Battacharya thinks Florida did a great job handling covid, i'm not sure i trust his judgement! According to the science and data, Florida did no better or worse than basically anywhere else. I dunno what else to say. Y'all got lied to.