re: #65 Hecuba’s daughter

A WSJ IPhone message this afternoon referencedan Opinion piece with the following description: Has Governor Ron DeSantis been vindicated? What can we learn from Florida’s Covid success story?

Of course this is an opinion piece and therefore needs to be taken with a pound of salt. And since I don’t subscribe to the publication, I don’t have access to the entire article.

I believe the basic argument was: Florida has a much older population than most states and therefore would be expected to exhibit a higher overall death rate, but the death rate is in the middle. The economy was opened and is much healthier than other states that were more serious about lockdowns, while the mortality is lower than states that instituted statewide measures. DeSantis did listen to several experts on how best to handle the disease for nursing home patients and apparently implemented a strategy based on the observation that 80% of deaths are among seniors over 65 and therefore if the state focuses on the best treatment for the elderly, it will significantly reduce mortality without needing to adopt stringent limitations on businesses.

Anyone from Florida have more insight? (or can read the entire article?) Are the Florida mortality statistics reliable?

They are so reliable they fired and then arrested their IT specialist for publishing the real statistics. (I was out watching “WandaVision”)

Vindication for Ron DeSantis (Wall Street Journal, yesterday)

The media vilified him for rejecting harsh lockdowns. But Florida’s Covid-19 numbers are better than California’s or New York’s, and its economy thrives.

In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo imposed strict lockdown policies—many still in place—and became the media’s golden boy. “The governor of New York’s morning news conferences have become part of the country’s new daily rhythm,” the Washington Post’s Style section gushed in March 2020. “He’s the strongman who can admit he’s wrong. He speaks fluently about the facts. He worries about his mother, and by extension, yours, too.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis took a different approach and was pilloried. He was among the first to lift his state lockdown, adopting something resembling Sweden’s strategy of protecting the vulnerable while keeping businesses and schools open. “Florida Man Leads His State to the Morgue,” read a June headline in the New Republic. “Ron DeSantis is the latest in a long line of Republicans who made the state a plutocratic dystopia. Now he’s letting its residents die to save the plutocrats.”

A year after the virus hit the U.S., Mr. Cuomo’s luster has faded, and Mr. DeSantis can claim vindication. The Sunshine State appears to have weathered the pandemic better than others like New York and California, which stayed locked down harder and longer.

Mortality data bear out this conclusion. The Covid death risk increases enormously with each decade of age. More than 80% of Covid deaths in the U.S. have occurred among seniors over 65. They make up a larger share of Florida’s population than any other state except Maine. Based on demographics, Florida’s per-capita Covid death rate would be expected to be one of the highest in the country.

(more)

They are ignoring of course New York was one of the first places hit, when no one knew what to do about the virus.

The article says Florida is in the middle of the pack on per capita deaths (according to Worldometer, that is correct, Florida ranks 27th). It ignores other states which have lower rates which imposed mask orders (such as Wyoming and Hawai’i, which score better than Florida, or those which did not such as North and South Dakota, which score far worse than Florida). They also ignore cities (higher rate) over rural areas (lower rate).