As was mentioned in the article, Florida benefited from lower population density and better weather. NYC and SF would have had huge overcapacity at hospitals if they had loosened restrictions. Florida had a lower death rate because they did a better job protecting the elderly, especially those in nursing homes. Having a mask mandate could have made their numbers better, but that’s just a part of identity politics from Trump lackeys.
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Reminds me of my brief days in trying to invent an ROI on disease/care management.
I look forward to reading the academic reports but not the opinion polls which will make me want to puke.
I think there is going to be a cornucopia of research on the economic, health, and social data collected over the last year. Some of it will even be good.
Probably also benefited from snow birds (mostly old people, who died elsewhere) returning in the summer from whence they came, because summer in FL sucks damp balls.
The economy is more important than an excess number of people dying and an excess number people going to the hospital. Your point is noted once again, Nick.
Obama blamed everything on Bush for 3+ years. Using the past to predict the future, why would we expect anything different from this version of the Obama administration.
One of my best friends who lives in NYC spent several weeks down in Miami during the beginning of the COVID outbreak, and he certainly wasn’t the only one to do so. He could have cared less about Florida loosening restrictions - he just wanted to be in a place with better weather and a lower population density. Lots of other people from NYC and other northern cities did that too.
So your friend was one of those who may have “seeded” the outbreak across the country as people fled NYC?
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Better like California’s numbers?
Oh, wait…
Without a mask mandate, CA’s numbers would have gone from terrible to clusterfluff
I don’t think this can be supported with research or data. Especially long term. I think wearing a mask was helpful, I’m not sure mandates were.
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In most places the mandates were not enforced by law enforcement. Enforced (or openly flaunted) by businesses, mainly, some of whom had to contend with freaks and guns (or both simultaneously).
I’d need a historical timeline of executive orders regarding COVID in FL to determine what should have been done differently, or whether I agreed with them. From a quick Google, it seemed to do a lot of “encouraging” as opposed to making rules. And rates of complying to various state edicts differ by state, and that is a big driver of COVID, along with population density and weather.
Iowa lifted its mask mandate on Feb 7 while other midwest States had no change in their policy.
Which one is Iowa’s curve in this chart of Midwestern states?
How did all those states coordinate their compliance with mandates (or lack thereof) so well? They’re like Joey Fatone & Lance Bass they’re so in sync.
We really ended up with the worst overall policy regarding COVID. Mandates ended up being useless since the people who disagreed with them either didn’t comply or simply found some way to get COVID privately. Everyone trying to avoid COVID hasn’t been in a bar for a year now. And the actively downplaying the threat the whole time on top of it.
Uh, the gray one?
There are two suspects, assuming “bad consequences”:
- The lowest one that steadily moves upward starting 2/10 to third or fourth by the end of the chart; or
- the the one that jumps from middle of the pack to the highest on 2/13, though it drops back down on 2/20.
So, I’ll go with my first guess.
This graph covers a longer time period, but you can still see that both of your guesses are wrong.
Maybe you should revisit that assumption of “bad consequences.”
I’ll be revisiting some things, for sure.
Like I said mask wearing is effective, mask mandates, not so much. They are unenforceable to the point they don’t mean anything. The places where they are strictly enforced are the lowest risk places. What’s a person’s real risk of contracting Covid at the grocery? How many people are you close to and breathing their breath in at the grocery for long enough to get a virus from them? Not many in my experience. Meanwhile the highest risk gatherings in people’s homes, at churches, at bars, at restaurants, etc often had everyone in the room wearing no mask at all.
I think in my country, the mandate vastly increased the proportion of people wearing masks. Hardly anyone did before the mandate came in.