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Comment by ojisan_seiuchi | Hacker News Reader

> Meanwhile, Texas and Florida, which largely remained open and avoided draconian lockdowns, seem to have made out OK. Kids have been going to school, businesses have stayed open. You look at COVID death rates by state, and neither Florida nor Texas cracks the top half.

The arguments are passionate, but in at least one case objectively wrong. The current death rate in Florida is 1.15 per 100,000, putting it at #1 in the U.S. Likewise, the current COVID-19 death rate in TX is 0.81 per 100,000 putting that state at #6 in the U.S.[1]

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

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That opinion piece is from August 10th, before the current wave impacted TX and FL as much as they have been affected throughout the middle-end of August. In any case, you're looking at the current average, which is obviously skewed toward the states experiencing a current wave.

Texas has an overall COVID-19 death rate of 2,008/1,000,000 people, which is 1/10000th of a percentage point higher than the national average.

Florida has an overall COVID-19 death rate of 2,138/1,000,000 people, which is still much better than New Jersey (3,032), New York (2,823), Massachusetts (2,653), Rhode Island (2,618), and Connecticut (2,354), and is certainly impacted by the high number of elderly and retirees in Florida.

As for current rates, California has not-quite-twice the population of Florida (39.5mm vs 21.5mm) but a 3-day mov avg. death rate three times as high (119 vs. 39).

Obviously, statistics can be interpreted a lot of ways. Lies, damn lies, and statistics, of course. FL's 7-day mov avg (64) is more than half of CA's 7-day mov avg. (94), for example.

But the fact remains that the two states with the least restrictive lockdowns did not end up the two states with the worst COVID-19 death rates over the course of the pandemic so far.

At a minimum, that constitutes a reasonable basis to question whether the expert consensus is sufficiently based in evidence as to support unprecedented restrictions of liberty in the country that ostensibly leads the free world.

Sources: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/FL https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/CA

Florida changed how they report deaths early last month. They went from counting them on the date they were recorded to counting them on the date of death. This is almost never the same day, often it is quite delayed. Florida’s recent daily deaths are significantly understated.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25379689...

Thank you, I didn't know that. That's helpful regarding the discrepancy between 3-day and 7-day moving averages compared to other states.

And don't forget to factor in age group, meaning the national average last week per capita for 18-74 was 5.x and Florida has a lot of old retired people, many moving out of places like NY this year. Then there's Texas with greater than 1M illegal immigrants most of whom were said to be infected, which I'm going to guess these factors skews the numbers for this year.

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