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California COVID death rate: 0.146% Florida COVID death rate: 0.155% These numbers are statistically tied. Yet, FL's economy is open, kids are in school, Dis

California COVID death rate: 0.146% Florida COVID death rate: 0.155% These numbers are statistically tied. Yet, FL's economy is open, kids are in school, Disney World entertaining tourists. CA's business are closed & kids are depressed and falling behind. (Bad) leadership matters.

redisman 5y ago
Interesting claims. How do you know FL economy and kids depression is doing so much better than CA?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jacob2484 5y ago
  Unemployment rates for one. But now, numbers are skewed because we printed billions of dollars to bail out California.
  - WalterGR 5y ago
    we printed billions of dollars to bail out California. Do you have a (non-opinion piece) citation for this from a reputable source?
    - jacob2484 5y ago
      California’s robust budget will get another $26 billion from new COVID-19 stimulus - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-11/california-budget-26-billion-covid-19-stimulus https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-11/californ...
      - WalterGR 5y ago
        You wrote "to bail out California" and yet the headline says "robust budget." Do you have evidence that California was bailed out? How much money does California give the federal government compared to that $26 billion that it got back? How much does California give vs. other states?
matthewdgreen 5y ago
Florida is currently facing a $2-$3 billion tax shortfall (numbers vary depending on the time of projection [0]) and California is facing a budget surplus [1]. There are details around this like one-off capital gains and tax rates and budget cuts, but the overall story is that FL had a slightly higher death rate than CA in exchange for an overall economy that isn't doing so well. Some of this is due to the fact that FL's economy is tourism-driven and my personal response to that is: as a tourist I was very tempted to (safely) visit FL this winter, but the whole "our state doesn't believe in basic COVID restrictions" thing made that much too scary. [0] https://www.wftv.com/news/local/facing-3-billion-shortfall-lawmakers-look-close-online-sales-tax-loophole/GN6VMIYKHRESTL4XW4CMUNDFPY/ https://www.wftv.com/news/local/facing-3-billion-shortfall-l... [1] https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-california-coronavirus-pandemic-8d01e88ceeb4b0bc6cb1fb0d6a8d72b7 https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-california-coronavir...
- rajin444 5y ago
  Will you adjust your priors after seeing death rates between California and Florida are roughly the same?
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    They're not the same, Florida is higher. But overall Florida seems to be an outlier among the "low restriction" states and California seems to be an outlier among the "high restriction" states. A better approach would be to average the groups of states that took different approaches, and maybe also try to normalize by other confounders like population density. This is probably a better approach because there might be other pandemics in the future that are way deadlier, and we should actually know what works and what doesn't.
thesausageking 5y ago
Note that this is Florida's official death rate which we know underestimates the real rate. The governor stepped in and made all numbers go through a special department which does things like throw out any deaths from non-residents (snowbirds and visitors). Based on excess death counts, the real number for Florida maybe 25-100% higher. See: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/25/undercounting-covid-19-deaths-greatest-in-pro-trump-areas-analysis-shows/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/25/undercounting-covid-19-d... https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-florida-coronavirus-deaths-delays-explanation-20201024-jb2qc2plcvedzi6hg2e4rq2bke-story.html https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-florida-coron... https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306130 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2020.3061...
- Izkata 5y ago
  Those are theorizing based on excess deaths. Meanwhile, when the records were directly inspected, they found that Florida's death count was inflated by about 10%: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/house-report-says-floridas-covid-19-death-toll-inflated-by-10 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/house-report-say...
thenaturalist 5y ago
The rates seem to be indeed quite similar, but what are your sources for these numbers? A simple Google search [0, 1] yields California: 57.501 deaths, 3.641.664 cases (= 1.58%) [0] https://g.co/kgs/kooiXn https://g.co/kgs/kooiXn Florida: 32.712 deaths, 2.004.354 cases (= 1.63%) [1] https://g.co/kgs/Mrh3NR https://g.co/kgs/Mrh3NR Total number of cases to total state population is just shy of 10% in both cases.

redisman 5y ago

Interesting claims. How do you know FL economy and kids depression is doing so much better than CA?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jacob2484 5y ago
Unemployment rates for one. But now, numbers are skewed because we printed billions of dollars to bail out California.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  we printed billions of dollars to bail out California. Do you have a (non-opinion piece) citation for this from a reputable source?
  - jacob2484 5y ago
    California’s robust budget will get another $26 billion from new COVID-19 stimulus - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-11/california-budget-26-billion-covid-19-stimulus https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-11/californ...
    - WalterGR 5y ago
      You wrote "to bail out California" and yet the headline says "robust budget." Do you have evidence that California was bailed out? How much money does California give the federal government compared to that $26 billion that it got back? How much does California give vs. other states?

matthewdgreen 5y ago

Florida is currently facing a $2-$3 billion tax shortfall (numbers vary depending on the time of projection [0]) and California is facing a budget surplus [1]. There are details around this like one-off capital gains and tax rates and budget cuts, but the overall story is that FL had a slightly higher death rate than CA in exchange for an overall economy that isn't doing so well. Some of this is due to the fact that FL's economy is tourism-driven and my personal response to that is: as a tourist I was very tempted to (safely) visit FL this winter, but the whole "our state doesn't believe in basic COVID restrictions" thing made that much too scary. [0] https://www.wftv.com/news/local/facing-3-billion-shortfall-lawmakers-look-close-online-sales-tax-loophole/GN6VMIYKHRESTL4XW4CMUNDFPY/ https://www.wftv.com/news/local/facing-3-billion-shortfall-l... [1] https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-california-coronavirus-pandemic-8d01e88ceeb4b0bc6cb1fb0d6a8d72b7 https://apnews.com/article/gavin-newsom-california-coronavir...

rajin444 5y ago
Will you adjust your priors after seeing death rates between California and Florida are roughly the same?
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  They're not the same, Florida is higher. But overall Florida seems to be an outlier among the "low restriction" states and California seems to be an outlier among the "high restriction" states. A better approach would be to average the groups of states that took different approaches, and maybe also try to normalize by other confounders like population density. This is probably a better approach because there might be other pandemics in the future that are way deadlier, and we should actually know what works and what doesn't.

thesausageking 5y ago

Note that this is Florida's official death rate which we know underestimates the real rate. The governor stepped in and made all numbers go through a special department which does things like throw out any deaths from non-residents (snowbirds and visitors). Based on excess death counts, the real number for Florida maybe 25-100% higher. See: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/25/undercounting-covid-19-deaths-greatest-in-pro-trump-areas-analysis-shows/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/25/undercounting-covid-19-d... https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-florida-coronavirus-deaths-delays-explanation-20201024-jb2qc2plcvedzi6hg2e4rq2bke-story.html https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-florida-coron... https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306130 https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2020.3061...

Izkata 5y ago
Those are theorizing based on excess deaths. Meanwhile, when the records were directly inspected, they found that Florida's death count was inflated by about 10%: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/house-report-says-floridas-covid-19-death-toll-inflated-by-10 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/house-report-say...

thenaturalist 5y ago

The rates seem to be indeed quite similar, but what are your sources for these numbers? A simple Google search [0, 1] yields California: 57.501 deaths, 3.641.664 cases (= 1.58%) [0] https://g.co/kgs/kooiXn https://g.co/kgs/kooiXn Florida: 32.712 deaths, 2.004.354 cases (= 1.63%) [1] https://g.co/kgs/Mrh3NR https://g.co/kgs/Mrh3NR Total number of cases to total state population is just shy of 10% in both cases.