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Here are a few observations. From the CDC [1], 2020 total covid deaths by state: West Virginia 1318, Florida 21546, Maine 344, Vermont 134. The corresponding

by todd8 3y ago

Here are a few observations. From the CDC [1], 2020 total covid deaths by state: West Virginia 1318, Florida 21546, Maine 344, Vermont 134. The corresponding April 2020 census populations [2] for these four states are: West Virginia 1793716, Florida 21538187, Maine 1362359, Vermont 643077. Thus, before the vaccines for covid were available the deaths per 100,000 persons for these four states are: West Virginia 73, Florida 100, Vermont 21, Maine 25. Someone should probably check my math, but it looks like voting for Trump causes over three times as many deaths even before vaccinations were available. In other words, the analysis in the original article may be affected by unaccounted for confounding factors. For example, COPD is a significant medical risk factor for serious covid complications according to the CDC. COPD affects over 13.6% of the population of West Virginia (the worst rate in the country) but affects only 5.9% of the population of Vermont [3]. Personally, I chose to get vaccinated and boosted at the earliest possible dates. I also caught covid during the initial big wave of omicron cases in my state. [1] https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/99750 https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/99750 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [3] https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/copd-trends-brief/data-tables/copd-prevalence-rates-by-state-gender https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/copd-tr...

vharuck 3y ago
I'd say the pre-vax differences likely came from how people treated public health advice and precautions. If somebody believed it was no worse than the flu or even didn't exist (like some of my in-laws in Summer 2020), they would be far more likely to catch it, spread it, and receive poor treatment. Those differences in behavior would carry over to vaccination rates, since that's also responding to public health recommendations. It's hard to believe Silver didn't do the analysis on pre-vax death rates, but he didn't mention it so I don't know. If COPD and similar conditions were the major difference, I would expect the difference in death rates to be closer to 2.3x (13.6%/5.9%) than 2.9x (73/25 per 100k). Those are very different ratios. And I don't know about any other complicating conditions with larger relative rates than 2.3x for those two states. Obesity is only 1.3x higher in West Virginia. So this gets back to Silver's point: you can almost always find other contributors, but that doesn't necessarily prove something else didn't contribute. You have to do that analysis all together. But complicating health conditions don't seem to be able to account for the differences, even before a regression test.

by todd8 3y ago

vharuck 3y ago

I'd say the pre-vax differences likely came from how people treated public health advice and precautions. If somebody believed it was no worse than the flu or even didn't exist (like some of my in-laws in Summer 2020), they would be far more likely to catch it, spread it, and receive poor treatment. Those differences in behavior would carry over to vaccination rates, since that's also responding to public health recommendations. It's hard to believe Silver didn't do the analysis on pre-vax death rates, but he didn't mention it so I don't know. If COPD and similar conditions were the major difference, I would expect the difference in death rates to be closer to 2.3x (13.6%/5.9%) than 2.9x (73/25 per 100k). Those are very different ratios. And I don't know about any other complicating conditions with larger relative rates than 2.3x for those two states. Obesity is only 1.3x higher in West Virginia. So this gets back to Silver's point: you can almost always find other contributors, but that doesn't necessarily prove something else didn't contribute. You have to do that analysis all together. But complicating health conditions don't seem to be able to account for the differences, even before a regression test.