Monday, April 11, 2022

A Pandemic Report Card Study

Well, there is now finally a study comparing the several states in their performance during the pandemic.  The paper can be found here.  It looks at health, economic, and educational outcomes, and then combines them into a composite score and then converts to letter grades A through F.  Covid death rates are adjusted for age and metabolic health, while excess all-cause deaths are adjusted for age.

The results?  Spoiler alert:  Free and open states like Utah, Florida, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Vermont each got an A overall while the most stringent states such like New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, California, Illinois, and Washington, DC each got an F overall.  And the middling states were, well, somewhere in the middle overall.

Like the song says, some will win, some will lose, and some are born to sing the blues.  And greater stringency only increases the odds of falling into the latter category.   The restrictions turned out to be not only useless, but actually worse than useless. 

2 comments:

  1. I think the pandemic restrictions were implemented because government wanted more power for itself. This shows that freedom is not free.

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    1. Indeed, that is unfortunately very true. It was all about power.

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