Top 4 states by population (CA, TX, FL, NY) offer an interesting contrast in how their governments have responded to the pandemic. From an outcomes perspective, there's not a lot to recommend the extra measures imposed on residents of CA and NY. 1/
By deaths per 100K residents: heritage.org/data-visualiza…
1. New York (222.9)
2. Texas (125.8)
3. Florida (123.3)
4. California (103) 2/
I understand the argument that NY deaths should be graded on a curve because more of their cases occurred earlier in the pandemic and before better treatment protocols were developed. 3/
However, the infection rate per 100,000 stats also don't seem to favor the "full lockdown plus" approach favored by Newsom/Cuomo. statista.com/statistics/110…
1. Texas 9,229
2. California 9,110
3. Florida 9,056
4. New York 8,711
4/
There's a lot to unpack here where you could make arguments based on population demographics, population density, lots of other factors. You could also make a pretty decent case against the "do nothing" approach from ND/SD stats. 5/
But at first glance the extra misery imposed on Californians in particular does not appear to have really had a measurable impact on the spread or severity of the pandemic. 6/
Partisan politics is sadly going to probably color scientific debate over this after all the dust has cleared but there are a lot of interesting questions that have been raised thus far. Like, why does RI have way, way more cases than CT, but the two have roughly similar deaths?
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