Timing matters. Take a look at this, which is cumulative deaths per capita from the start of the pandemic in the US to now for New York, Florida, California, an

Timing matters. Take a look at this, which is cumulative deaths per capita from the start of the pandemic in the US to now for New York, Florida, California, and Washington [1]. New York got hit early and hard, having a large number of deaths in the first 2-3 months before anyone knew how to deal with COVID. After that New York did better than average. Florida got through the first 2-3 months fine, with about the same low number of deaths that California and Washington had. Handled well they could have stayed like that, but instead they started having a higher than average death rate and closing the gap with New York in total deaths. Florida's highest death rates were during the delta wave, which was after vaccines were widely available. The vaccine was very effective at preventing death from delta, which is why California and Washington had slight upturns in the death rate at that time as opposed to the steep rise in Florida. [1] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-normalized&highlight=Washington&show=highlight-only&y=both&scale=linear&data=deaths&data-source=jhu&xaxis=right&extra=Florida%2CCalifornia%2CNew%20York#states-normalized http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/?chart=states-...