Lockdown-loving states New York and California are among the worst overall pandemic performers while freedom-loving states Florida and South Dakota are among the best, new research by a leading U.S. think tank has found.
A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research has scored and ranked U.S. states by their performance over the past two years on three measures – health, economy and education – before combining them into a composite score and overall rank.
The paper, entitled “A Final Report Card on the States’ Response to COVID-19“, is written by Casey B. Mulligan, Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, Phil Kerpen, President of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, and Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation. It is a follow-up to the preliminary report card the authors published in October 2020.
For economic performance the authors used two measures: unemployment and GDP by state. For education they used a single metric: the percentage of schools that stayed open in 2020-21 as tracked by Burbio (with hybrid instruction weighted half). For mortality they used two measures: Covid-associated deaths reported to the CDC and all-cause excess mortality.
Recognising significant underlying differences between states, the authors adjusted the scores to account for these factors.
Of course, even without a pandemic, states populations are heterogeneous and their economies emphasise different industries. And because the pandemic had a much more negative effect on economic output in some industries (such as entertainment, energy production, mining, hotels and food), we adjust unemployment and GDP changes for industry composition. We adjust Covid mortality (through March 5th, 2022) for age and ‘metabolic health’, by which we mean the pre-pandemic prevalence of obesity and diabetes – as these are highly correlated with higher death rates from the virus.
Like numerous other studies, the authors found no relationship between lockdowns (measured in this case by economic impact) and health outcomes. If anything there was a slight correlation between remaining open and lower mortality.
The pack was led by Utah, Nebraska, and Vermont, which were substantially above average in all three categories. Six more states followed in the top rank, including Florida and South Dakota.
The authors add that the four states with the highest rates of net outward migration from July 2020 to July 2021 – Washington D.C., New York, Illinois and California – were all in their bottom six. People aren’t so keen on living in lockdown states.
Here are the scores and ranks for age-adjusted Covid deaths.
And for age-adjusted excess deaths.
Another weighty nail in the lockdown coffin – though lockdown proponents seem very slow in accepting it.
The paper is worth reading in full.
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I had forgotten about Dakota who called it right from the start. The image I have of California and New York now is so very different to a couple of years back. Such a shame
I heard their Govenor, Kristi Noem, giving a speech about her philosphy, she is one a vanishingly small number of inspiring politicians.
She actually values human freedom and recognises the US constitution as being critical, the very opposite of dementia Joe and the average Republican President.
She is a good speaker and I can remember the early comparisons with the other half of Dakota but it got restricted coverage, which reflects the power and influence of the media, at least outside of the US.
She’s great. She actually seems to believe in small government. Her take on lockdowns seemed to be that she did not believe she had the power to actually impose them. She was probably right. One of her best tweets was “If you’re still worried about covid, wear a mask, stay at home, get vaccinated. We’re not going to mandate anything.”
I don’t think she’s a sceptic about the whole thing in the same way we are, but their approach was to give people information and let them make their own decisions.
She let the sturgis bike extravaganza go ahead
She wanted a lockdown, but her state parliament rejected it.
She then switched sides and tactics eloquently.
Give me DeSantis over her at anytime, politically.
There are numerous studies showing that lockdown policies caused more harm than good.
But it does not matter, lockdown policies (like global warming policies) are in place to serve the globalist political agenda not address any issue they are sold as addressing.
So this study, although it may be rock solid and beyond dispute, will not make a blind bit of difference to our government or any other government.
Because “it’s not about what they say it’s about “
Correct.
Surely this is not the point. The point is Trump, racism, climate change, transgender, taking the vaxx for The Science, and women of colour.
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OK, I give up: where is Florida on that chart?
I’m glad it is not just me being thick.
I think it’s right on the line near MO, SC, and AR. I think I can just make out FL.
I believe you’re right. Thanks.
For each of these studies, lockdown proponents have one of their own with numbers calculated to show that their policy works. But this is really all irrelevant. The question is not Do lockdowns etc work? but Is it legitimate to impose them on people to accomplish some abstract worthy end? To use a superficially more extreme example, COVID-19 could have been treated like avian flu, ie, cull the infected and all of their close contacts. This would certainly have worked in the sense of eliminating localized outbreaks. Is it legitimate to reduce people to mere objects of disposition of other people because these other people claim to believe that their dictatorship will be for the best of all?
The answer to that is clearly no. That’s not supposed to happen in the kind of society we’re supposed to be living in. Certainly not for a rather mundane, communicable disease which poses no danger for the overwhelming majority of the population. People are not livestock and vets (the head of the Robert Koch Institute, the central German public health agency, is actually a vet) are not supposed to manage them as if they were. That the vets and would-be vets firmly believe otherwise and actually succeeded with putting their grand designs into practice to some degree means there’s something fundamentally broken in our political system.
Ceterum censeo Johnson dimittendos esse.
C’mon, everyone knows the worst performers would have had even worse results had they not taken the actions they did and the best performers would have had even better results if they’d copied the worst performers.
Ah yes. The narrative!