Which States Have Handled COVID Best Recently?

[Mina]

Earlier I posted something showing how each state did throughout the course of the pandemic, in terms of percentage elevation of mortality. I thought people might be interested in how things look if you only look at the last year, since that shows how they did once all the major tools were in place for protecting people (e.g., vaccines were available to anyone who wanted them, there were no shortages of masks and sanitizers, etc.)

Here is the data from mid-April 2021 through mid-April 2022 (anything more recent has spotty data):

State Total Deaths Total Expected Deaths % Excess Deaths
Massachusetts 65010 63268 2.75%
Rhode Island 11777 11244 4.74%
Hawaii 13504 12720 6.16%
New Hampshire 14486 13554 6.88%
New Jersey 84616 79160 6.89%
Maryland 58185 53862 8.03%
North Dakota 8476 7797 8.71%
Nebraska 19962 18304 9.06%
Connecticut 36857 33573 9.78%
Iowa 35560 32160 10.57%
New York 116007 104883 10.61%
South Dakota 9715 8716 11.46%
Minnesota 53547 47996 11.57%
Wisconsin 63804 56601 12.73%
Pennsylvania 158470 139996 13.20%
Puerto Rico 34803 30698 13.37%
Maine 18028 15850 13.74%
District of Columbia 7171 6296 13.90%
Missouri 78932 69048 14.31%
Illinois 125647 109714 14.52%
North Carolina 117705 102534 14.80%
California 322035 279938 15.04%
Washington 71046 61689 15.17%
Kansas 32585 28198 15.56%
Indiana 81070 69953 15.89%
Ohio 152009 131009 16.03%
Virginia 86470 74237 16.48%
Louisiana 56884 48789 16.59%
Delaware 11858 10167 16.63%
United States 3515462 3008793 16.84%
South Carolina 63178 53658 17.74%
Utah 24343 20448 19.05%
Michigan 121383 101715 19.34%
Arkansas 40961 34159 19.91%
Alabama 67266 55969 20.18%
Oklahoma 50370 41828 20.42%
Tennessee 97365 80531 20.90%
Florida 269890 222717 21.18%
Colorado 51197 42155 21.45%
Kentucky 61753 50758 21.66%
Wyoming 6201 5094 21.73%
Oregon 46760 38335 21.98%
Mississippi 40620 33271 22.09%
Georgia 111655 91231 22.39%
Texas 269651 219258 22.98%
Vermont 7141 5796 23.21%
Idaho 19165 15508 23.58%
Nevada 34736 28013 24.00%
Montana 13429 10771 24.68%
West Virginia 30385 24162 25.76%
New Mexico 25225 19994 26.16%
Arizona 82291 65182 26.25%
Alaska 6256 4722 32.49%

As you can see, the difference between the very best states, like Massachusetts, and the very worst, like Alaska, are gigantic: literally over ten times as much elevation of mortality, in that case.

 

[Mina]

Here is the data from mid-April 2021 through mid-April 2022 (anything more recent has spotty data):

That's a lot of clutter, so here's a simpler way to think of it. If you categorize each of those as "red" or "blue" by which party they went for in the majority of the last three presidential elections, here are the TOTAL numbers for each:

Red
Population: 160,046,270
Total Deaths During Year: 1,847,677
Mortality Rate: 1.154464%

Blue
Population: 174,939,718
Total Deaths During Year: 1,639,763
Mortality Rate: 0.93733%

Now, you may eyeball that and think "well, 1.154% isn't that much worse than 0.937%." But think what it means in terms of total lives. If those Red states had achieved a mortality rate equal to the total for Blue, then 1,500,162 people would have died there, which means 347,515 fewer than actually died.

That's such a huge number it can be hard to wrap your mind around. So, think of it in terms of multiples of 9/11. 2,977 were killed in those terrorist attacks. So, 347,515 is approximately equal to the death toll if the Red States had been suffering ten 9/11 attacks per month, throughout the year.

The mortality difference between living in Red America and Blue America, during the last year is staggeringly large.

 

[Walt]

It is hard to deny that after the initial outbreak, when a plan could be executed, blue states just did better.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Who cares?

 

[Lightbringer]

I thought people might be interested in how things look if you only look at the last year, since that shows how they did once all the major tools were in place for protecting people

So you're ignoring all of the elderly people Whitmer killed? Sounds about right for your kind.

 

[Code1211]

Earlier I posted something showing how each state did throughout the course of the pandemic, in terms of percentage elevation of mortality. I thought people might be interested in how things look if you only look at the last year, since that shows how they did once all the major tools were in place for protecting people (e.g., vaccines were available to anyone who wanted them, there were no shortages of masks and sanitizers, etc.)

Here is the data from mid-April 2021 through mid-April 2022 (anything more recent has spotty data):

State Total Deaths Total Expected Deaths % Excess Deaths
Massachusetts 65010 63268 2.75%
Rhode Island 11777 11244 4.74%
Hawaii 13504 12720 6.16%
New Hampshire 14486 13554 6.88%
New Jersey 84616 79160 6.89%
Maryland 58185 53862 8.03%
North Dakota 8476 7797 8.71%
Nebraska 19962 18304 9.06%
Connecticut 36857 33573 9.78%
Iowa 35560 32160 10.57%
New York 116007 104883 10.61%
South Dakota 9715 8716 11.46%
Minnesota 53547 47996 11.57%
Wisconsin 63804 56601 12.73%
Pennsylvania 158470 139996 13.20%
Puerto Rico 34803 30698 13.37%
Maine 18028 15850 13.74%
District of Columbia 7171 6296 13.90%
Missouri 78932 69048 14.31%
Illinois 125647 109714 14.52%
North Carolina 117705 102534 14.80%
California 322035 279938 15.04%
Washington 71046 61689 15.17%
Kansas 32585 28198 15.56%
Indiana 81070 69953 15.89%
Ohio 152009 131009 16.03%
Virginia 86470 74237 16.48%
Louisiana 56884 48789 16.59%
Delaware 11858 10167 16.63%
United States 3515462 3008793 16.84%
South Carolina 63178 53658 17.74%
Utah 24343 20448 19.05%
Michigan 121383 101715 19.34%
Arkansas 40961 34159 19.91%
Alabama 67266 55969 20.18%
Oklahoma 50370 41828 20.42%
Tennessee 97365 80531 20.90%
Florida 269890 222717 21.18%
Colorado 51197 42155 21.45%
Kentucky 61753 50758 21.66%
Wyoming 6201 5094 21.73%
Oregon 46760 38335 21.98%
Mississippi 40620 33271 22.09%
Georgia 111655 91231 22.39%
Texas 269651 219258 22.98%
Vermont 7141 5796 23.21%
Idaho 19165 15508 23.58%
Nevada 34736 28013 24.00%
Montana 13429 10771 24.68%
West Virginia 30385 24162 25.76%
New Mexico 25225 19994 26.16%
Arizona 82291 65182 26.25%
Alaska 6256 4722 32.49%

As you can see, the difference between the very best states, like Massachusetts, and the very worst, like Alaska, are gigantic: literally over ten times as much elevation of mortality, in that case.

You SEEM to be measuring desirability of outcome by only one metric.

At the start of this whole mess, we were told that if we did NOTHING, we would suffer 2.2 million deaths.

If we implemented even a bare minimum of mitigations like washing hands more often or social distancing a bit, we could cut that in half to ONLY 1.1 million deaths.

Our current death count in the US is 1.02 million.

Apparently, according to the experts that motivated the destruction of the world's economy using their indicators of success, all of the measures implemented beyond the bare minimums were wasted and entirely ineffective.

After the first year of the various responses, the motivating study that kicked off the ill advised responses was described as a "buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming".

The question is not "Which state followed the flawed advice better?" The question is, "Why did the world follow the advice that was so flawed and inaccurate?"

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...essor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html

 

[Walt]

Our current death count in the US is 1.02 million.

Excess deaths are a little less effected by politics. Unfortunately, states like Florida have decided to fool with the numbers, so it is hard to compare death counts.

Excess deaths for the USA is 1,154,950. For Taiwan they are -3,760(a negative number). The precautions taken for Covid also saved lives, so the number Covid killed would be something above 1.15 million.

 

[Code1211]

Excess deaths are a little less effected by politics. Unfortunately, states like Florida have decided to fool with the numbers, so it is hard to compare death counts.

Excess deaths for the USA is 1,154,950. For Taiwan they are -3,760(a negative number). The precautions taken for Covid also saved lives, so the number Covid killed would be something above 1.15 million.

In the US, the Feds paid hospitals to care for Covid patients.

Patients who were admitted for one thing were immediately tested for Covid and were vehicles to gain more funding from the Feds.

Many countries did NOT pay bonuses to hospitals for admitting Covid Patients. The US did.

I was surprised during the US Covid Crisis that the deaths among the aged were such a high percent of all Covid deaths.

In the Summer of 2020, percent of Covid Deaths compared to All Deaths sorted by age are this:

Age 0 to 29: All- 0.7 Covid- 0.3
Age 30 to 59: All- 7.0 Covid- 8.7
Age 60 and up: All- 92.1. Covid- 91.1

The distribution of ALL deaths sorted demographically is VERY similar with or without Covid as a consideration.

We don't know what the death toll for Covid would have been without Covid. I know that in the case of my father, he died with various illnesses. Picking one as the main culprit seemed odd.

It's a pretty safe bet, though, that the economic carnage from Covid would not have been as bad if the close downs, shut downs, and quarantines had not been demanded by our lying thieves.

Estimates seem to range between 35% of small businesses closed and 80% hurt to various degrees by the Covid RESPONSES. Educations were also hurt to various degrees.

The various close downs, shut downs, and quarantines destroyed many, MANY businesses and many, MANY freedoms, but the virus seemed to spread just fine.

 

[Walt]

Patients who were admitted for one thing were immediately tested for Covid and were vehicles to gain more funding from the Feds.

That would be another good reason to use excess deaths. Excess deaths would not be effected by any type of testing bias. In fact, even without any testing, we can get an excess deaths number.

I know that in the case of my father, he died with various illnesses. Picking one as the main culprit seemed odd.

Excess deaths allows us to figure out how many more people died due to Covid, without having to try to figure out who exactly died from what.

 

[Code1211]

That would be another good reason to use excess deaths. Excess deaths would not be effected by any type of testing bias. In fact, even without any testing, we can get an excess deaths number.



Excess deaths allows us to figure out how many more people died due to Covid, without having to try to figure out who exactly died from what.

Seems pretty true, but excess deaths is only excess deaths.

If we are looking at a plane crash with 100% fatalities, the connections and the causes seems pretty obvious.

Covid's victims, though, were almost exclusively confined to those who were aged, overweight or had underlying conditions.

About 90% have been aged, about 70% have been over weight and about 94% have had underlying conditions.

Take away the aged, the overweight and the already ill from the approximate 1 million strong US death total and we end up with only 1,800 US deaths attributed to Covid.

Were the overweight folks with underlying conditions who were also old killed by Covid or was that just the last straw that pushed them over the edge?

Without trying to be disrespectful to those who died over the last two or three years, Covid seems like the wolves waiting to pounce on the stragglers already weakened and unable to keep up with the herd.

 

[Mina]

So you're ignoring all of the elderly people Whitmer killed? Sounds about right for your kind.

I'm ignoring nothing. I'm measuring an entire year. I've also posted numbers for the entire pandemic span. Those all-encompassing numbers tend to be unpopular with right-wingers, since they want to focus only on particular incidents they think make Democrats look bad, rather than judging by the bottom line.

 

[Mina]

You SEEM to be measuring desirability of outcome by only one metric.

Yes, in this case, I'm looking only at excess death percentages.

At the start of this whole mess, we were told that if we did NOTHING, we would suffer 2.2 million deaths.

The passive voice doesn't do well there. Who said 2.2 million deaths?

If we implemented even a bare minimum of mitigations like washing hands more often or social distancing a bit, we could cut that in half to ONLY 1.1 million deaths.

That was a blind guess by a particular person at the start, before we knew about Delta or Omicron, etc. Don't you agree it would be pretty stupid to now take that as if it were an absolute truth against which to compare our results?

Apparently, according to the experts that motivated the destruction of the world's economy using their indicators of success, all of the measures implemented beyond the bare minimums were wasted and entirely ineffective.

No, that's definitely not apparent. Just by looking within the US, we can see VASTLY different rates of excess death by state, telling us what a huge impact these policies made.

 

[Code1211]

Yes, in this case, I'm looking only at excess death percentages.



The passive voice doesn't do well there. Who said 2.2 million deaths?



That was a blind guess by a particular person at the start, before we knew about Delta or Omicron, etc. Don't you agree it would be pretty stupid to now take that as if it were an absolute truth against which to compare our results?



No, that's definitely not apparent. Just by looking within the US, we can see VASTLY different rates of excess death by state, telling us what a huge impact these policies made.

The 2.2 Million number was first put into the public consciousness by Neil Fergusson and then was parroted by our CDC and NIH.

While it was a stupid guess, it was not a blind guess. Turns out that it was a garbage in-garbage out result like so many that justify the stupidities of government today.

Regarding the various waves, they seem to be pretty much identical across states even though they were timed differently with some a little later and some a little earlier.

In all cases, regardless of the mitigation measures in place or amplified or diminished across time before or after the wave it, the Covid waves started, rose, crested and fell. They all seemed to take about three months.

Whether masks or shut downs or school closings or rabbit's feet were employed, the waves did the same things across the same time spans in every state.

We have been told by the CCP that in China, as one example, that the Chinese response(s) were incredibly effective and this is evidence of their superiority. Despite this, their country is shut down and they are not able to produce computer chips.

China reports about 5,100 deaths so far. This is obviously a lie. I don't know if they have published a number for excess deaths. 5,100 deaths among their 1.5 Billion People probably would not even represent deaths from poorly refrigerated foods.

Using any single measurement is what it is. The effectiveness of any response to Covid BY GOVERNMENT must include impacts that are economic, not intrusive against freedoms and allow free commerce and are frugal as well as health impacts.

I don't challenge the accuracy of your numbers. I only remind that they include only a part of what should be considered to determine what "Best" means.

 

[Mina]

Regarding the various waves, they seem to be pretty much identical across states even though they were timed differently with some a little later and some a little earlier.

That's untrue, though. We now have two full solid years of data on mortality rates during the pandemic, by state. That covers two full seasonal cycles, so sampling timing shouldn't be a big factor.

You can see the raw data here:

https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/xkkf-xrst/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD&bom=true&format=true target=

Using that data, we can figure out how many deaths would have happened in each state during the pandemic if pre-pandemic mortality rates had continued (taking averages of five years of pre-pandemic mortality data), and we can figure out how many actually died in each state during the pandemic. Using those two figures, we can calculate by what percentage the pandemic drove mortality rates up in each state.

When we do that for the first two years of the pandemic, we learn that the differences between states are massive. For example, the worst state is Arizona, where 128,336 deaths would have happened in those two years if pre-pandemic mortality rates for the state had held, but instead 163,906 died. That's a 27.72% increase. At the other end, Hawaii would have had 24,493 die in two years at pre-pandemic mortality rates, but instead it was 25,276, which is just 3.20%. As you can see, the mortality elevation suffered by the worst state was almost nine times as much as in the best.

Those are, of course, extreme examples. But compare, say, the fourth-best (Massachusetts) to the fourth-worst (Texas). Mortality was elevated almost three times as much in Texas. Or even compare the 15th best (Delaware) to the 15th worst (Montana). Mortality elevation was over a third worse in the latter.

It turns out that even after controlling for the timing of waves by taking two full-year cycles, there were places for which COVID was almost a non-factor for mortality, and places where it was nothing short of catastrophic.

Here's the full calculated data set, current as of the last week of March 2022:

% Elevation State Observed Expected
27.72% Arizona 163906 128336
26.36% Mississippi 81713 64665
26.05% New Mexico 49207 39039
26.02% Texas 539464 428082
24.48% Alaska 11287 9067
24.34% Wyoming 11733 9436
23.81% Georgia 221123 178596
22.12% Alabama 133982 109717
21.06% Louisiana 115474 95388
20.96% Nevada 67395 55719
20.26% South Carolina 125996 104769
20.16% Oklahoma 98444 81929
20.12% California 667827 555988
20.02% Montana 25238 21028
19.88% West Virginia 56117 46810
19.49% Tennessee 188118 157434
19.42% Arkansas 79835 66850
19.05% Colorado 98635 82851
18.54% United States 6998114 5903636
18.46% Michigan 236119 199318
18.33% Kentucky 118808 100405
17.65% Florida 517184 439587
17.41% Illinois 254422 216692
17.39% South Dakota 19852 16911
17.25% New Jersey 182057 155269
16.97% Kansas 63999 54712
16.88% Idaho 35631 30485
16.60% Indiana 161019 138099
16.55% New York 238539 204663
16.45% Virginia 168378 144587
16.44% Oregon 87102 74802
16.31% Utah 46606 40069
15.68% North Carolina 231740 200337
15.41% Missouri 155992 135159
15.41% Vermont 13314 11536
15.19% Ohio 298267 258945
14.99% Connecticut 75191 65391
14.94% North Dakota 17106 14882
14.56% Delaware 23151 20209
14.44% Pennsylvania 317937 277808
13.38% District of Columbia 14834 13084
13.27% Wisconsin 125241 110568
12.73% Iowa 70701 62719
12.60% Maryland 119307 105960
12.58% Rhode Island 24140 21443
12.40% Minnesota 104916 93341
12.11% Nebraska 39491 35225
11.99% Washington 134123 119767
9.35% Maine 33333 30484
9.02% Massachusetts 134244 123141
9.00% Puerto Rico 66681 61175
5.48% New Hampshire 27933 26482
3.20% Hawaii 25276 24493

So now that you understand that the waves did not, in fact, cause the same damage in different places would you care to revise your opinion?

To be fair, there's other things at stake, not just human lives. For example, in theory, tighter COVID controls may have driven up unemployment rates. And I think the data at least weakly supports that, since if we look at the change in unemployment rates between tight-restriction states and loose-restriction states, from the end of 2019 to today, we find that the loose-restriction states did slightly better on average. Like Massachusetts has unemployment 1.5 points higher today than back then, while in Texas it's only 0.9, and Mississippi is 1.5 points lower than back then, while Minnesota is just 0.8 points lower than it was.

So, that may be the trade-off we're talking about. If we took Massachusetts and Texas as our exemplars, we'd see it as Texas agreeing to allow 72,784 more people die, in exchange for achieving an unemployment rate of 4.4 instead of 5.0. Would that have been a good trade-off? Well, that depends on how much value you put on a human life. From a pro-life perspective (in the more honest sense of that phrase), it's a terrible trade-off, but opinions can differ.

 

[Sailor]

That's a lot of clutter, so here's a simpler way to think of it. If you categorize each of those as "red" or "blue" by which party they went for in the majority of the last three presidential elections, here are the TOTAL numbers for each:

Red
Population: 160,046,270
Total Deaths During Year: 1,847,677
Mortality Rate: 1.154464%

Blue
Population: 174,939,718
Total Deaths During Year: 1,639,763
Mortality Rate: 0.93733%

Now, you may eyeball that and think "well, 1.154% isn't that much worse than 0.937%." But think what it means in terms of total lives. If those Red states had achieved a mortality rate equal to the total for Blue, then 1,500,162 people would have died there, which means 347,515 fewer than actually died.

That's such a huge number it can be hard to wrap your mind around. So, think of it in terms of multiples of 9/11. 2,977 were killed in those terrorist attacks. So, 347,515 is approximately equal to the death toll if the Red States had been suffering ten 9/11 attacks per month, throughout the year.

The mortality difference between living in Red America and Blue America, during the last year is staggeringly large.

Looks like all those blue states that killed all those innocent people cannot handle the actual, justified law suits and are learning something. Next.

 

[RB 60]

Seems pretty true, but excess deaths is only excess deaths.

If we are looking at a plane crash with 100% fatalities, the connections and the causes seems pretty obvious.

Covid's victims, though, were almost exclusively confined to those who were aged, overweight or had underlying conditions.

About 90% have been aged, about 70% have been over weight and about 94% have had underlying conditions.

Take away the aged, the overweight and the already ill from the approximate 1 million strong US death total and we end up with only 1,800 US deaths attributed to Covid.

Were the overweight folks with underlying conditions who were also old killed by Covid or was that just the last straw that pushed them over the edge?

Without trying to be disrespectful to those who died over the last two or three years, Covid seems like the wolves waiting to pounce on the stragglers already weakened and unable to keep up with the herd.

A friend in my car club was doing well before the Chinese Disease killed him. He had underlying conditions, but was just fine before contracting the Chinese Disease.
He had it twice, the first time it gave him no problems, just like a bad cold. The second time, it ultimately killed him. One day he was doing fine, the next he was dead.

Liberals can scream Trump, but there were more deaths reported under Biden than Trump, and Biden had the Trump vaccine!
My mother damn near died from the Chinese Disease, my cousin's husband wasn't so lucky. My mother wore a mask every place
she went and still contracted it, spent over 3 weeks in the hospital and 3 more in a rehab and needed a walker for months afterward.

I would say your last sentence was disrespectful to some of those that died from the Chinese Disease. Not all of them
were "already weakened and unable to keep up with the herd" as you say.

 

[Code1211]

That's untrue, though. We now have two full solid years of data on mortality rates during the pandemic, by state. That covers two full seasonal cycles, so sampling timing shouldn't be a big factor.

You can see the raw data here:

https://data.cdc.gov/api/views/xkkf-xrst/rows.csv?accessType=DOWNLOAD&bom=true&format=true target=

Using that data, we can figure out how many deaths would have happened in each state during the pandemic if pre-pandemic mortality rates had continued (taking averages of five years of pre-pandemic mortality data), and we can figure out how many actually died in each state during the pandemic. Using those two figures, we can calculate by what percentage the pandemic drove mortality rates up in each state.

When we do that for the first two years of the pandemic, we learn that the differences between states are massive. For example, the worst state is Arizona, where 128,336 deaths would have happened in those two years if pre-pandemic mortality rates for the state had held, but instead 163,906 died. That's a 27.72% increase. At the other end, Hawaii would have had 24,493 die in two years at pre-pandemic mortality rates, but instead it was 25,276, which is just 3.20%. As you can see, the mortality elevation suffered by the worst state was almost nine times as much as in the best.

Those are, of course, extreme examples. But compare, say, the fourth-best (Massachusetts) to the fourth-worst (Texas). Mortality was elevated almost three times as much in Texas. Or even compare the 15th best (Delaware) to the 15th worst (Montana). Mortality elevation was over a third worse in the latter.

It turns out that even after controlling for the timing of waves by taking two full-year cycles, there were places for which COVID was almost a non-factor for mortality, and places where it was nothing short of catastrophic.

Here's the full calculated data set, current as of the last week of March 2022:

% Elevation State Observed Expected
27.72% Arizona 163906 128336
26.36% Mississippi 81713 64665
26.05% New Mexico 49207 39039
26.02% Texas 539464 428082
24.48% Alaska 11287 9067
24.34% Wyoming 11733 9436
23.81% Georgia 221123 178596
22.12% Alabama 133982 109717
21.06% Louisiana 115474 95388
20.96% Nevada 67395 55719
20.26% South Carolina 125996 104769
20.16% Oklahoma 98444 81929
20.12% California 667827 555988
20.02% Montana 25238 21028
19.88% West Virginia 56117 46810
19.49% Tennessee 188118 157434
19.42% Arkansas 79835 66850
19.05% Colorado 98635 82851
18.54% United States 6998114 5903636
18.46% Michigan 236119 199318
18.33% Kentucky 118808 100405
17.65% Florida 517184 439587
17.41% Illinois 254422 216692
17.39% South Dakota 19852 16911
17.25% New Jersey 182057 155269
16.97% Kansas 63999 54712
16.88% Idaho 35631 30485
16.60% Indiana 161019 138099
16.55% New York 238539 204663
16.45% Virginia 168378 144587
16.44% Oregon 87102 74802
16.31% Utah 46606 40069
15.68% North Carolina 231740 200337
15.41% Missouri 155992 135159
15.41% Vermont 13314 11536
15.19% Ohio 298267 258945
14.99% Connecticut 75191 65391
14.94% North Dakota 17106 14882
14.56% Delaware 23151 20209
14.44% Pennsylvania 317937 277808
13.38% District of Columbia 14834 13084
13.27% Wisconsin 125241 110568
12.73% Iowa 70701 62719
12.60% Maryland 119307 105960
12.58% Rhode Island 24140 21443
12.40% Minnesota 104916 93341
12.11% Nebraska 39491 35225
11.99% Washington 134123 119767
9.35% Maine 33333 30484
9.02% Massachusetts 134244 123141
9.00% Puerto Rico 66681 61175
5.48% New Hampshire 27933 26482
3.20% Hawaii 25276 24493

So now that you understand that the waves did not, in fact, cause the same damage in different places would you care to revise your opinion?

To be fair, there's other things at stake, not just human lives. For example, in theory, tighter COVID controls may have driven up unemployment rates. And I think the data at least weakly supports that, since if we look at the change in unemployment rates between tight-restriction states and loose-restriction states, from the end of 2019 to today, we find that the loose-restriction states did slightly better on average. Like Massachusetts has unemployment 1.5 points higher today than back then, while in Texas it's only 0.9, and Mississippi is 1.5 points lower than back then, while Minnesota is just 0.8 points lower than it was.

So, that may be the trade-off we're talking about. If we took Massachusetts and Texas as our exemplars, we'd see it as Texas agreeing to allow 72,784 more people die, in exchange for achieving an unemployment rate of 4.4 instead of 5.0. Would that have been a good trade-off? Well, that depends on how much value you put on a human life. From a pro-life perspective (in the more honest sense of that phrase), it's a terrible trade-off, but opinions can differ.

I never understand why posters amputate a shred of a thought and present it as if it is a complete thought.

Within the vast majority of my thought that you discarded, apparently in order to distort my thought to one that was nonsensical, was the assertion that the shape of the waves were identical from place to place even though they were timed differently.

The Virus hit New York harder and earlier than it hit Wyoming. This seems logical due to the frequency of international travel and the fact that people in New York live like ants crawling over each other on a hill.

Among your numbers, there must have been an example of a draconian response that matches the level of draconian-ness that the over reaching government types seem to want to recommend as ideal.

WERE THE PRODUCED OUTCOMES FROM THOSE DRACONIAN RESPONSES EFFECTIVE IN REDUCING THE DEATHS TO ZERO?

If not, those recommending draconian shut downs and so forth are simply comparing plates of pig crap, one to another, and declaring that one plate of pig crap is more tasty and smells better than another.

The virus did what the virus did. You are listing data here that may correlate to something that you imagine, but that is actually only correlation, not results of causation.

Regarding the impact of the draconian shut downs, closings, and all the rest, the recovery to any point is NOT a useful measure to check.

The measure to check is the run-up of the Federal Debt and the run-down of the private sector GDP.

Small Businesses were the primary victims of the Government attacks on the private sector during the Covid attacks made by government.

About 35% of all small businesses closed nationally during Covid were STILL closed on May 5, 2021.

In the mean time, Americans who visited points of congregation, like Grocery stores and Walmart, during the time when churches and schools were closed numbered more than the American population every week.

What happened in the US under the idiocy of the covid "response" was devastating. That it went on for so long was insanity.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/05/america-united-states-covid-small-businesses-economics/
<snip>
99.9% of all businesses in the U.S. qualify as small businesses, collectively employing 47.3% of the nation’s private workforce.
They've been one of the hardest-hit sectors amid the pandemic.
Compared to January 2020, 34% of small businesses are closed.
San Francisco is one of the most affected metro areas, with a 48% closure rate of small businesses.
<snip>

 

[Code1211]

A friend in my car club was doing well before the Chinese Disease killed him. He had underlying conditions, but was just fine before contracting the Chinese Disease.
He had it twice, the first time it gave him no problems, just like a bad cold. The second time, it ultimately killed him. One day he was doing fine, the next he was dead.

Liberals can scream Trump, but there were more deaths reported under Biden than Trump, and Biden had the Trump vaccine!
My mother damn near died from the Chinese Disease, my cousin's husband wasn't so lucky. My mother wore a mask every place
she went and still contracted it, spent over 3 weeks in the hospital and 3 more in a rehab and needed a walker for months afterward.

I would say your last sentence was disrespectful to some of those that died from the Chinese Disease. Not all of them
were "already weakened and unable to keep up with the herd" as you say.

I'm sorry that my last sentence offended you. It was not meant to. 99.92% of all Covid deaths occurred among those who were Old, Over Weight or suffered with Underlying Conditions.

Only 0.08% of Covid deaths claimed those who were not in these three vulnerable groups: old age, over weight or with underlying conditions.

Perhaps the analogy was what was offensive? The facts of the matter are facts. The virus was after all of us, but those weakened by their circumstances were more likely to be victimized.

I had a friend who was claimed as a covid fatality who was about 5-7 and weighed something over 400 pounds. He also had a lung-related issue. By comparison, I'm 6-2 and weigh about 182, giver or take. Together, we looked a little like Laurel and Hardy.

My over weight friend wore a mask religiously and was a vocal proponent of all covid mitigation measures really right up until the moment of his death.

I have been particularly annoyed that the masks we were so insistently advised to wear were/are pretty much useless. We are now told that ONLY the N-95 type masks were/are effective against the transmission of the Covid Virus.

Our leaders and the experts they present(ed) were lying to us throughout the "crisis" and they need to be brought to account.

WHY IS OUR MEDIA LETTING THEM OFF THE HOOK?

 

[Mina]

Looks like all those blue states that killed all those innocent people cannot handle the actual, justified law suits and are learning something. Next.

Take another look at the data. As you can see, the mortality rate was MUCH, MUCH lower in the Blue States. In fact, the difference between the two is so huge that it's on par with what the difference would be if the Red States had suffered ten 9/11 attacks per month for a whole year. I know that conservatives would rather focus on specific mistakes or alleged mistakes made by Blue State governors, but while everyone makes mistakes, the averages show pretty clearly who was making more of them, or at least much worse mistakes. It turns out that living in the Red States, during COVID, was a whole hell of a lot more dangerous than living in the Blue ones.

 

[Geeko Sportivo]

It's hard to wrap your head around the fact that so many Right-Wing Hate radio hosts died from covid- while they preached against the vaccine!

All I can say is KARMA! It'll catch up to you!