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No, they're saying that excess deaths is a rearward looking metric that nobody had the luxury of actually having at the present time when decisions were being m

No, they're saying that excess deaths is a rearward looking metric that nobody had the luxury of actually having at the present time when decisions were being made. It's very easy to make decisions in retrospect when you have all the information that could be useful. It's very hard to make decisions in the present when that information doesn't exist yet.

loeg 3y ago
Obviously rearward looking metrics were irrelevant and no one, including me, is suggesting otherwise. You can make policies with the goal of reducing deaths in advance of measurement, and policymakers did. The argument I am criticizing never mentions rearward metrics as a problem.
- slv77 3y ago
  My impression was that a segment of the population felt that the lockdowns and other constraints imposed by policymaker were primarily fear based. This may have been due a perceived difference between religious versus secular acceptance of death (a continuation versus end). My point isn’t that policymakers can’t make nuanced decisions about the value of a human life (since it is done on a regular basis) but instead that from a policymakers perspective it was irrelevant. The bigger concern was the collapse of the health care system which is a non-negotiable. The assumption that friends and family will calmly watch a family member’s untended death from covid when ICUs are over capacity and that essential workers will continue to show up for work knowing there is no hope for care if they fall ill is unrealistic in my opinion.
  - ianai 3y ago
    Toure seriously doing yeoman's work with these comments.
panarky 3y ago
>>> What about ten lives? One thousand? Ten thousand? Are 200,000 lives meaningful enough? Silver's regression model shows that for each 1% increase in the vote share for the blue candidate, the covid death rate in that state (statistically) would fall by 15.5 per million population. In areas where the blue candidate received 20% of the vote, and the red candidate received 80%, the model predicts 1,793 deaths per million. And in areas where blue got 80% and red got 20%, the model predicts 864 deaths per million. A 300% greater death rate [1] is a startlingly high penalty to pay for an ideology. This is at least 200,000 deaths [2] attributed to political ideology. Not to mention the tremendous excess suffering that did not result in death. And, no, it's not because red areas are older than blue areas. It's because red ideologues got the vaccine in far lower numbers. [1] Coefficients show that blue at 0% would have a death rate of 2,103 per million, and blue at 100% would have a death rate of 554 per million. [2] 2,103 - 554 = 1,549 excess deaths per million for red, multiplied by 45% of the US population is roughly 230,000.
- lazide 3y ago
  Arguably, ideology is and has always been the largest contributor to death (and birth) rates no?
- Izkata 3y ago
  > It's because red ideologues got the vaccine in far lower numbers. Pretty sure it was something like 60% vs 70%. That doesn't seems like anywhere near different enough to explain those numbers.
  - panarky 3y ago
    The same article also does the regression on vaccination rates. The data is as clear as it gets.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  It's because red ideologues got the vaccine in far lower numbers. Vaccine refusal played a part, certainly, in connection with the fact that conservatives are older. In many instances, a lot older. In other instances, not really that much older. The trend is unidirectional but the degree varies by state, as you'll find when you start comparing West Virginia and Florida to Maine and Vermont. But the truth is inescapable: the older someone was, the more they needed to get vaccinated and boosted... and the less likely they did.
  - defrost 3y ago
    From TFA: *The differences in state death rates are very likely because of differences in vaccine uptake* Just to be clear, I don’t mean to imply that COVID is intrinsically more likely to target Republicans or anything like that. Rather, my claim is that COVID is considerably more deadly in people who haven’t been vaccinated, and since Republicans are less likely to be vaccinated than Democrats, state partisanship serves as a proxy for this. Indeed, we can look at vaccination directly. ... age and vaccination rates alone explain more than half of the variation in COVID death rates between states since Feb. 2021. However Silver didn't mention age being strongly correlated (either way) with being vaccinated, which is interesting, given the rest of the article it'd be expected to be stated if it was.

loeg 3y ago

Obviously rearward looking metrics were irrelevant and no one, including me, is suggesting otherwise. You can make policies with the goal of reducing deaths in advance of measurement, and policymakers did. The argument I am criticizing never mentions rearward metrics as a problem.

slv77 3y ago
My impression was that a segment of the population felt that the lockdowns and other constraints imposed by policymaker were primarily fear based. This may have been due a perceived difference between religious versus secular acceptance of death (a continuation versus end). My point isn’t that policymakers can’t make nuanced decisions about the value of a human life (since it is done on a regular basis) but instead that from a policymakers perspective it was irrelevant. The bigger concern was the collapse of the health care system which is a non-negotiable. The assumption that friends and family will calmly watch a family member’s untended death from covid when ICUs are over capacity and that essential workers will continue to show up for work knowing there is no hope for care if they fall ill is unrealistic in my opinion.
- ianai 3y ago
  Toure seriously doing yeoman's work with these comments.

panarky 3y ago

>>> What about ten lives? One thousand? Ten thousand? Are 200,000 lives meaningful enough? Silver's regression model shows that for each 1% increase in the vote share for the blue candidate, the covid death rate in that state (statistically) would fall by 15.5 per million population. In areas where the blue candidate received 20% of the vote, and the red candidate received 80%, the model predicts 1,793 deaths per million. And in areas where blue got 80% and red got 20%, the model predicts 864 deaths per million. A 300% greater death rate [1] is a startlingly high penalty to pay for an ideology. This is at least 200,000 deaths [2] attributed to political ideology. Not to mention the tremendous excess suffering that did not result in death. And, no, it's not because red areas are older than blue areas. It's because red ideologues got the vaccine in far lower numbers. [1] Coefficients show that blue at 0% would have a death rate of 2,103 per million, and blue at 100% would have a death rate of 554 per million. [2] 2,103 - 554 = 1,549 excess deaths per million for red, multiplied by 45% of the US population is roughly 230,000.

lazide 3y ago
Arguably, ideology is and has always been the largest contributor to death (and birth) rates no?
Izkata 3y ago
> It's because red ideologues got the vaccine in far lower numbers. Pretty sure it was something like 60% vs 70%. That doesn't seems like anywhere near different enough to explain those numbers.
- panarky 3y ago
  The same article also does the regression on vaccination rates. The data is as clear as it gets.
CamperBob2 3y ago
It's because red ideologues got the vaccine in far lower numbers. Vaccine refusal played a part, certainly, in connection with the fact that conservatives are older. In many instances, a lot older. In other instances, not really that much older. The trend is unidirectional but the degree varies by state, as you'll find when you start comparing West Virginia and Florida to Maine and Vermont. But the truth is inescapable: the older someone was, the more they needed to get vaccinated and boosted... and the less likely they did.
- defrost 3y ago
  From TFA: *The differences in state death rates are very likely because of differences in vaccine uptake* Just to be clear, I don’t mean to imply that COVID is intrinsically more likely to target Republicans or anything like that. Rather, my claim is that COVID is considerably more deadly in people who haven’t been vaccinated, and since Republicans are less likely to be vaccinated than Democrats, state partisanship serves as a proxy for this. Indeed, we can look at vaccination directly. ... age and vaccination rates alone explain more than half of the variation in COVID death rates between states since Feb. 2021. However Silver didn't mention age being strongly correlated (either way) with being vaccinated, which is interesting, given the rest of the article it'd be expected to be stated if it was.