Two Years of COVID, by state

In addition, Florida, along with most other States, had a grace period from the time Covid paralyzed NY till it hit them, in other words, time to understand more about the virus and how it spread, yet, a good number of those States didn't benefit from the knowledge

Yes. That's what makes it so strange how badly states like Texas and Mississippi did. They had fair warning. They saw how catastrophic the disease was in NYC, so they had no excuse for being complacent... and just as importantly, public health officials and doctors had been getting more informed in those months. For example, early on, they were putting people on ventilators too early, with poor results. Later, they learned ventilators are a last resort, and you should start with things like proning with supplemental oxygen. And public health officials learned that all the wiping down of surfaces in the world barely mattered, because the real threat was all the little airborne particles, so you needed to work on social distancing, masking, and improving air circulation. Plus, those who managed not to get hit hard early had the advantage of there being available tests by the time the disease arrived in force, as well as mask supplies, sanitizer, etc., which those first states largely had to do without because the supply chain wasn't ready for the demand. But, there was a certain arrogance in a lot of states, where they treated COVID like it was a blue-state/urban/racial-minority problem. They ignored the lessons and then paid the price.
 
I'm sure that must have made things easier for the. But there were a number of other low-density red states that did pretty horribly (e.g., Wyoming). So, I'm still open to the idea that they were doing something else right that helped them succeed where every other red state failed.

Could Wyoming's low population account for some of it?
 
Could Wyoming's low population account for some of it?

Low population should, in theory, make no difference on its own, since all the data is effectively per-capita data. But the smaller the population, the "noisier" the data is going to be, so maybe. You can see that with Vermont, too, which jumped up and down the list really fast, because when you're small an outbreak can throw your numbers around a lot more rapidly than if you have the ballast of many millions of residents.
 
Well then I would have to go with Wyoming being such a ruby Red State and consequently the results of bad Covid policy
 
My guess is that Hispanics don't have any particular susceptibility to the virus. I guess that mostly based on the fact Puerto Rico had the third-lowest mortality elevation during the pandemic, while having a higher share of Hispanics than any of the other places. NJ and NY also have fairly high percentage of Hispanics (8th and 9th among the states), and seem to have done pretty well for themselves in the long run. But, I guess the proof will be in the disaggregated data. I look forward to what the epidemiologists come up with in coming years, when they do the post-mortem on this pandemic.

AZ has a large Hispanic population and the counties where that population is particularly large like Yuma and Santa Cruz go hit harder than much of the rest of the state.
 
Since different states used different standards when deciding when to attribute deaths to COVID, using their self-reported numbers can be misleading. But where we can do a clear comparison is in terms of how much mortality was elevated in each place, during the pandemic. If, for example, in the five years before COVID an average of 1% of the population died per year, and then during COVID it was an average of 1.25%, that's a 25% elevation of mortality.

Using that method, I put together a visualizer that allows you to watch two years of COVID play out over 45 seconds, with the cumulative percentage of excess mortality for each state.

You can see that early on states like NJ, NY, and CT got hit hardest. Over time, though, other states wound up moving ahead. Eventually, looking at a two-year period from the start of April 2020 to the end of March 2022, AZ, MS, and TX wound up having the worst cumulative performance:

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/9658616/

<div class="flourish-embed flourish-bar-chart-race" data-src="visualisation/9658616"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"></script></div>

Looks like a lot of work. The graph changes so fast and measures only one metric, it is both hard to follow and difficult to gauge.

The problems with the general "response" to Covid around the country was not what was done to control the Virus. OBVIOUSLY the mitigation measures did NOT mitigate the virus.

The mitigation measures mitigated both the economy and the Trump Presidency while enriching the lying thieves administering them. That is what they were aimed at and that is what they achieved.

Neil Ferguson predicted 2.2 Million US deaths if NOTHING was done. That's what drove the stupidities of the "Covid Response".

If the American people had merely washed their hands more often, THAT ALONE was predicted to reduce the death toll to half of 2.2 million. Do nothing = 2.2 million dead. Do anything = 1.1 million dead.

With EVERYTHING that was done hurting so many and destroying so much, we are now nearing that 1.1 million death mark originally predicted if we only started to wash our hands OR wear masks OR maintain a greater distance more often.

Our leaders are lying thieves and we are idiots to believe ANYTHING they tell us. If Covid taught us nothing else, it taught us this.
 
And Florida. But that was by design.

If trump hadn't attempted to keep the trump virus secret, the early numbers in NY/NJ would never have been so high.

This seems like an odd post.

What did Trump do to keep the virus a secret? He established the Corona Virus Task Force, announced the dangers of covid in his State of the Union that Antsy Nancy tore up and initiated operation WARP Speed.

Your view of reality seems to be warped.
 
AZ has a large Hispanic population and the counties where that population is particularly large like Yuma and Santa Cruz go hit harder than much of the rest of the state.

Do you know whether those counties also had higher Native American populations?
 
Looks like a lot of work.

The website does almost all the work. You just need a spreadsheet with the data in the right format. I had to write a simple macro to translate the CDC data to that format, but it's only about five or ten minutes of work.

The graph changes so fast and measures only one metric, it is both hard to follow and difficult to gauge.

There's a slider at the bottom you can use to take it as slowly as you'd like and freeze at any point, if you'd like more info than can be had at the one-month-per-second rate.

The problems with the general "response" to Covid around the country was not what was done to control the Virus. OBVIOUSLY the mitigation measures did NOT mitigate the virus.

It didn't ELIMINATE the virus. But, we certainly see much different rates from place to place, suggesting mitigation efforts did pay dividends in some places.

Neil Ferguson predicted 2.2 Million US deaths if NOTHING was done. That's what drove the stupidities of the "Covid Response".

I think it would be a mistake to take his shot-in-the-dark, early on, as if it were a factual matter. We don't know how many would be dead if nothing was done. We don't know how many would be dead if people merely washed their hands more often... but the idea of it reducing death by half just from that seems wildly suspect, knowing what we now know about transmission (most spreader events didn't involve fomites, but rather airborne transmission).

Anyway, we can get some sense for how effective various methods are by looking at the change in excess mortality from the worst places (e.g., places like Texas, where people were dying at a pace about one quarter above pre-COVID levels), and the best (e.g., Japan, which had mortality rates continue almost exactly at the pre-pandemic pace throughout). That suggests the possibility of mitigation efforts decreasing death rates by far more than half, if done right.

Our leaders are lying thieves and we are idiots to believe ANYTHING they tell us. [/I] If Covid taught us nothing else, it taught us this.

I think what COVID taught us is that right-wing leaders are, in fact, idiots, but that there are also good leaders who succeeded in saving thousands of lives relative to what would have happened if their areas had performed as badly as those under the inept rule of the wingnuts.
 
Since everyone likes to slam Florida I think we should look at blue states that did worse than Florida on a per capital rate.

Arizona
New Jersey
Michigan
Georgia
New Mexico
New York
Pennsylvania
Nevada

Lets also separate the counties that went against the governors orders and those that followed his orders. .
 
Do you know whether those counties also had higher Native American populations?

No, they don't. Maricopa, Pinal, Pima, and several in the northeastern corner of the state are the ones with all the Native population. Oh, La Paz on the Colorado river does too. Most of Arizona's population--something like 80%+ live in Maricopa or Pima counties.
 
This seems like an odd post.

What did Trump do to keep the virus a secret? He established the Corona Virus Task Force, announced the dangers of covid in his State of the Union that Antsy Nancy tore up and initiated operation WARP Speed.

Your view of reality seems to be warped.
You are clearly a child who cannot have these deep discussions
 
In addition, Florida, along with most other States, had a grace period from the time Covid paralyzed NY till it hit them, in other words, time to understand more about the virus and how it spread, yet, a good number of those States didn't benefit from the knowledge
Correct. Because they are run by morons.
 
Yes. That's what makes it so strange how badly states like Texas and Mississippi did. They had fair warning. They saw how catastrophic the disease was in NYC, so they had no excuse for being complacent... and just as importantly, public health officials and doctors had been getting more informed in those months. For example, early on, they were putting people on ventilators too early, with poor results. Later, they learned ventilators are a last resort, and you should start with things like proning with supplemental oxygen. And public health officials learned that all the wiping down of surfaces in the world barely mattered, because the real threat was all the little airborne particles, so you needed to work on social distancing, masking, and improving air circulation. Plus, those who managed not to get hit hard early had the advantage of there being available tests by the time the disease arrived in force, as well as mask supplies, sanitizer, etc., which those first states largely had to do without because the supply chain wasn't ready for the demand. But, there was a certain arrogance in a lot of states, where they treated COVID like it was a blue-state/urban/racial-minority problem. They ignored the lessons and then paid the price.
Yes. We were all learning on the fly, while hospitals were stacking dead bodies outside like cord wood. Easy to forget that everything coming out of the White House was downplaying, and denial.

Which is why you see many Red states ignoring the data/danger, and pretending that it was safe to return to 'normal'.
 
The website does almost all the work. You just need a spreadsheet with the data in the right format. I had to write a simple macro to translate the CDC data to that format, but it's only about five or ten minutes of work.



There's a slider at the bottom you can use to take it as slowly as you'd like and freeze at any point, if you'd like more info than can be had at the one-month-per-second rate.



It didn't ELIMINATE the virus. But, we certainly see much different rates from place to place, suggesting mitigation efforts did pay dividends in some places.



I think it would be a mistake to take his shot-in-the-dark, early on, as if it were a factual matter. We don't know how many would be dead if nothing was done. We don't know how many would be dead if people merely washed their hands more often... but the idea of it reducing death by half just from that seems wildly suspect, knowing what we now know about transmission (most spreader events didn't involve fomites, but rather airborne transmission).

Anyway, we can get some sense for how effective various methods are by looking at the change in excess mortality from the worst places (e.g., places like Texas, where people were dying at a pace about one quarter above pre-COVID levels), and the best (e.g., Japan, which had mortality rates continue almost exactly at the pre-pandemic pace throughout). That suggests the possibility of mitigation efforts decreasing death rates by far more than half, if done right.



I think what COVID taught us is that right-wing leaders are, in fact, idiots, but that there are also good leaders who succeeded in saving thousands of lives relative to what would have happened if their areas had performed as badly as those under the inept rule of the wingnuts.

One of the wondrous things about Covid is that it allows those with agenda and preset conclusions to find foundation in anything and for anything.

The mitigation measure most widely accepted to be useful was the wearing o' the mask. We are now told that ONLY the N-95 varieties of masks were effective at all. Surgical masks were measured to provide a mitigation rate down to 2%.

Photos and videos of workers inside virology labs show workers in hermetically sealed suits head to toe. The surgical masks worn by the general public and bandanas are comical in their stupidity.

I noted in June of 2020 that children aged 0 to 19 were almost entirely unaffected by Covid. Less than 0.1% of all covid deaths were among that group. Take away the 70% overweight and the 94% underlying conditions and that leaves almost none.

Even at today's total of deaths, that leaves fewer than 20 kids. The elderly, age 60 and older were very threatened. These numbers did not change until the Vaccine was widely distributed.

What did our "experts" do? They closed the schools. This is either outlandish stupidity and gross incompetence or evidence of an ulterior motivation.

I FEEL that it is evidence of ulterior motivation.

Our leaders are corrupt, self serving, lying thieves, but they don't seem top be outlandishly stupid. In following them, after all of the evidence that following them is stupid, we show ourselves to be stupid.

If their goal in everything they did during the Covid debacle was to steal money, they were successful. If it was to end covid, they failed.
 
One of the wondrous things about Covid is that it allows those with agenda and preset conclusions to find foundation in anything and for anything.

The mitigation measure most widely accepted to be useful was the wearing o' the mask. We are now told that ONLY the N-95 varieties of masks were effective at all. Surgical masks were measured to provide a mitigation rate down to 2%.

Photos and videos of workers inside virology labs show workers in hermetically sealed suits head to toe. The surgical masks worn by the general public and bandanas are comical in their stupidity.

I noted in June of 2020 that children aged 0 to 19 were almost entirely unaffected by Covid. Less than 0.1% of all covid deaths were among that group. Take away the 70% overweight and the 94% underlying conditions and that leaves almost none.

Even at today's total of deaths, that leaves fewer than 20 kids. The elderly, age 60 and older were very threatened. These numbers did not change until the Vaccine was widely distributed.

What did our "experts" do? They closed the schools. This is either outlandish stupidity and gross incompetence or evidence of an ulterior motivation.

I FEEL that it is evidence of ulterior motivation.

Our leaders are corrupt, self serving, lying thieves, but they don't seem top be outlandishly stupid. In following them, after all of the evidence that following them is stupid, we show ourselves to be stupid.

If their goal in everything they did during the Covid debacle was to steal money, they were successful. If it was to end covid, they failed.

Almost everything done to mitigate the pandemic was done to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. That's why schools were closed. Not because kids would die from the virus, but because they would spread it to those who could and did die from it. There is obviously no way to know how many lives were saved by mitigation measures. We can safely say though that w/o them, our 1M+ death toll just in the U.S. would have been far higher. But apparently since most of the dead were old, obese, already ill from something else, and so on, you and your ilk don't really care. It wasn't YOUR mom, dad, wife, brother, best friend.
 
You are clearly a child who cannot have these deep discussions

A non-response, but you are as free to converse as you are to do as you do.

It would be nice if you might employ actual facts and deal in realities from the real world.
 
Hello Mina,

Since different states used different standards when deciding when to attribute deaths to COVID, using their self-reported numbers can be misleading. But where we can do a clear comparison is in terms of how much mortality was elevated in each place, during the pandemic. If, for example, in the five years before COVID an average of 1% of the population died per year, and then during COVID it was an average of 1.25%, that's a 25% elevation of mortality.

Using that method, I put together a visualizer that allows you to watch two years of COVID play out over 45 seconds, with the cumulative percentage of excess mortality for each state.

You can see that early on states like NJ, NY, and CT got hit hardest. Over time, though, other states wound up moving ahead. Eventually, looking at a two-year period from the start of April 2020 to the end of March 2022, AZ, MS, and TX wound up having the worst cumulative performance:

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/9658616/

<div class="flourish-embed flourish-bar-chart-race" data-src="visualisation/9658616"><script src="https://public.flourish.studio/resources/embed.js"></script></div>

This is awesome.

I love how the states are colored to show whether they are Republican or Democrat.

The blues get hit hard at first but then the reds rise to the top over time.

It's easy to see which sort of governing is best in a pandemic.

PBS Newshour did a poll they aired last night. It showed that Americans believe Democrats do a better job on the pandemic.

The thirteen minute video can be watched, or the transcript read, at this link:

Brooks and Capehart
 
Hello Mina,

My guess is that Hispanics don't have any particular susceptibility to the virus. I guess that mostly based on the fact Puerto Rico had the third-lowest mortality elevation during the pandemic, while having a higher share of Hispanics than any of the other places. NJ and NY also have fairly high percentage of Hispanics (8th and 9th among the states), and seem to have done pretty well for themselves in the long run. But, I guess the proof will be in the disaggregated data. I look forward to what the epidemiologists come up with in coming years, when they do the post-mortem on this pandemic.

Hispanics include higher numbers of people living in large family groups, and working at jobs which require frequent exposure to numerous other humans, such as retail, meat processing, food preparation, and janitorial.
 
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