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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

It does appear that any half-assed study, done on the quick with obviously poor data, is trumpeted immediately as "trust the science!", but completely obvious facts, like that no one in Florida is wearing masks even in tight spaces (I'm in Florida now, and bars / restaurants / beaches / streets are packed with no-maskers), yet their covid rate is lower than New York, California, and Massachusetts which have very strict requirements. It's hard for me to trust any official statement on covid anymore.

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I was interested in the numbers from covid.cdc.gov

Theses are 7-day metrics for positive cases. - California: 59,487 - Florida: 179,586 - Massachusetts: 49,628 - New York: 93,309

Case numbers are meaningless for comparisons between states due to inconsistencies in testing. If you want to make a valid comparison then look at hospitalizations and deaths, then adjust for differences in population demographics.

> yet [Florida's] covid rate is lower than New York, California, and Massachusetts

If you're talking about deaths/1M pop, California (1905) is much lower than Florida (2905) whilst Massachusetts is fractionally higher (2922) but New York (3068) is dramatically higher, yes.

If you're not talking about deaths/1M pop, which rate are you looking at?

The more relevant metric is age adjusted death rate. Age is the primary risk factor for COVID-19. There is a much higher percentage of elderly people in Florida.

https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/blog/states-ranked-by-age-...

They don't seem to explain their methodology for how they've "age-adjusted" the figures which is a shame.

But assuming these are valid numbers: by this metric, both California (214) and Mass. (206) are doing better than Florida (235) which again contradicts the claim. Or am I reading these numbers wrongly?

Yes sorry I was looking at the wrong row. Edited my comment above.

What’s your explanation for the difference between New York and Florida?

Florida accepted that everyone will eventually get covid, and the statistics for death / hospitalization rates for the non-immuno-compromised and non-elderly are very low, so they just did the "Keep Calm and Carry On" ethos and it became endemic much sooner. However they did have strict requirements for nursing homes.

Basically, let everyone choose their own risk tolerance, and accept that we can't control this. Very slowly, after years of trying to fight the inevitable, liberal states are understanding this. But they are still pretending that a force-field surrounds you the moment you start eating food or drinking which makes masks not required at that moment, which is obviously absurd.

> But they are still pretending that a force-field surrounds you the moment you start eating food or drinking which makes masks not required at that moment, which is obviously absurd.

Here in SF the force field comes into effect the instant you sit down at your table and only dissipates when you stand up to leave... but God help you if, after a 90 minute maskless meal, you don't put your mask back on for the 15 second walk to the door.

Same. No one talks about this, especially not our "official organizations" who clearly have no agenda to fear monger or increase expansion of control and power through fear, and then people wonder why trust levels are so low.

It takes a lot to violate ones trust, but once its there, you don't get it back overnight. I speculate we are at the cusp of no return- the only way I can see new trust in any big US govt organization is well what history tells us. Destruction and recreation.

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