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Which States Did the Best Job Keeping People Alive During the Pandemic?

Mina

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Figuring out which states had the best pandemic performance can be tough for a few reasons. One of the biggest is that standards about when to label something a COVID death varied from state to state. Also, there are arguments about whether certain policies may have done more overall harm than good (e.g., tight lockdowns that may have saved people from COVID, but resulted in more indirect deaths from isolation, by way of suicide or drug overdoses).

There is a way around those problems, though. Simply compare the number of people who died in each state to the number who were expected to die based on pre-pandemic mortality rates in the state. For example, if, on average, 0.8% of the population of a state died per year, between 2015 and 2019, and then 1.0% died per year during the pandemic, that means people were dying at a 25% higher rate than normal.

Many of those extra deaths may be by way of indirect mechanisms (e.g., overwhelmed hospitals having more traffic-accident victims dying because ICU's were full of COVID patients), but either way it implicates state policy decisions.

So, in those terms, which places were most successful at minimizing the mortality impact of the pandemic on their people? Answers to follow.
 
Answers to follow.
Excluding N.C. (which has data gaps), here they are, best to worst:



State Excess Death% Observed Deaths Expected Deaths

Hawaii 3.04% 26174 25402

New Hampshire 5.16% 28942 27521

Massachusetts 8.58% 139194 128198

Maine 8.75% 34494 31718

Puerto Rico 8.89% 69055 63417

Nebraska 11.53% 40828 36607

Washington 11.56% 138918 124521

Minnesota 11.67% 108391 97064

Rhode Island 12.02% 24992 22311

District of Columbia 12.02% 15276 13637

Maryland 12.02% 123409 110163

Iowa 12.06% 73077 65215

Wisconsin 12.77% 129655 114973

Pennsylvania 13.59% 328603 289288

Delaware 14.07% 23947 20993

Connecticut 14.15% 77693 68061

North Dakota 14.27% 17687 15478

Ohio 14.44% 308283 269394

Vermont 14.56% 13769 12019

Missouri 14.59% 160949 140456

Oregon 15.57% 89970 77851

Utah 15.79% 48250 41669

Virginia 15.81% 174183 150404

Indiana 15.86% 166481 143696

New York 16.04% 247177 213006

South Dakota 16.23% 20449 17594

Kansas 16.28% 66103 56848

Idaho 16.32% 36822 31655

Illinois 16.86% 263366 225378

Florida 16.86% 534842 457672

New Jersey 16.90% 188733 161452

Kentucky 17.02% 122322 104529

United States 17.69% 7229063 6142422

Michigan 17.91% 244404 207280

Colorado 18.24% 101908 86191

Arkansas 18.46% 82350 69517

Tennessee 18.65% 194240 163704

California 19.09% 689587 579070

Oklahoma 19.13% 101494 85196

Montana 19.29% 26104 21883

West Virginia 19.55% 58182 48669

Nevada 19.61% 69393 58018

South Carolina 19.61% 130269 108907

Louisiana 20.28% 119247 99141

Alabama 20.97% 138024 114102

Georgia 22.49% 227503 185733

Alaska 22.70% 11546 9410

Wyoming 23.58% 12097 9789

New Mexico 24.53% 50568 40608

Texas 24.84% 555628 445085

Mississippi 25.22% 84259 67287

Arizona 26.53% 169159 133692



 
Excluding N.C. (which has data gaps), here they are, best to worst:



State Excess Death% Observed Deaths Expected Deaths

Hawaii 3.04% 26174 25402

New Hampshire 5.16% 28942 27521

Massachusetts 8.58% 139194 128198

Maine 8.75% 34494 31718

Puerto Rico 8.89% 69055 63417

Nebraska 11.53% 40828 36607

Washington 11.56% 138918 124521

Minnesota 11.67% 108391 97064

Rhode Island 12.02% 24992 22311

District of Columbia 12.02% 15276 13637

Maryland 12.02% 123409 110163

Iowa 12.06% 73077 65215

Wisconsin 12.77% 129655 114973

Pennsylvania 13.59% 328603 289288

Delaware 14.07% 23947 20993

Connecticut 14.15% 77693 68061

North Dakota 14.27% 17687 15478

Ohio 14.44% 308283 269394

Vermont 14.56% 13769 12019

Missouri 14.59% 160949 140456

Oregon 15.57% 89970 77851

Utah 15.79% 48250 41669

Virginia 15.81% 174183 150404

Indiana 15.86% 166481 143696

New York 16.04% 247177 213006

South Dakota 16.23% 20449 17594

Kansas 16.28% 66103 56848

Idaho 16.32% 36822 31655

Illinois 16.86% 263366 225378

Florida 16.86% 534842 457672

New Jersey 16.90% 188733 161452

Kentucky 17.02% 122322 104529

United States 17.69% 7229063 6142422

Michigan 17.91% 244404 207280

Colorado 18.24% 101908 86191

Arkansas 18.46% 82350 69517

Tennessee 18.65% 194240 163704

California 19.09% 689587 579070

Oklahoma 19.13% 101494 85196

Montana 19.29% 26104 21883

West Virginia 19.55% 58182 48669

Nevada 19.61% 69393 58018

South Carolina 19.61% 130269 108907

Louisiana 20.28% 119247 99141

Alabama 20.97% 138024 114102

Georgia 22.49% 227503 185733

Alaska 22.70% 11546 9410

Wyoming 23.58% 12097 9789

New Mexico 24.53% 50568 40608

Texas 24.84% 555628 445085

Mississippi 25.22% 84259 67287

Arizona 26.53% 169159 133692




Thanks for posting. What conclusions do you think we should draw from this?
 
Thanks for posting. What conclusions do you think we should draw from this?
Well, I think there were clearly a lot of factors at work. For example, drier states generally had more trouble than more humid states, as you'd expect when fighting a respiratory ailment. And low-density states had an easier time of it than high-density states, as you'd expect when trying to prevent transmission.

However, I think there's a good case to be made that generally more politically liberal approaches worked better. In places with greater political liberalism overall, officials at all levels (state, municipal, and even school officials) would be expected to be more aggressive in trying to fight the virus, and that seems to have paid dividends. Liberal areas generally tended to be on the higher end of that list, while conservative areas were at the bottom. Like of the worst ten, only one is what we'd traditionally call a "blue state" (NM). Meanwhile, of the best ten, only one is what we'd traditionally call a "red state" (NE).

That could also be because of public liberalism, rather than just political liberalism -- e.g., more people choosing to get vaccinated, and people also being more willing to do one another the courtesy of masking in high-transmission settings, regardless of whether it's mandated.
 
I love the fact AZ was last. Everyone in AZ hates the Gov. He was so incompetent during Covid and the numbers show it.
 
Figuring out which states had the best pandemic performance can be tough for a few reasons. One of the biggest is that standards about when to label something a COVID death varied from state to state. Also, there are arguments about whether certain policies may have done more overall harm than good (e.g., tight lockdowns that may have saved people from COVID, but resulted in more indirect deaths from isolation, by way of suicide or drug overdoses).

There is a way around those problems, though. Simply compare the number of people who died in each state to the number who were expected to die based on pre-pandemic mortality rates in the state. For example, if, on average, 0.8% of the population of a state died per year, between 2015 and 2019, and then 1.0% died per year during the pandemic, that means people were dying at a 25% higher rate than normal.

Many of those extra deaths may be by way of indirect mechanisms (e.g., overwhelmed hospitals having more traffic-accident victims dying because ICU's were full of COVID patients), but either way it implicates state policy decisions.

So, in those terms, which places were most successful at minimizing the mortality impact of the pandemic on their people? Answers to follow.
It's obvious isn't it?

More Californians were alive at the end of the pandemic than any other state! ;)
 
I love the fact AZ was last. Everyone in AZ hates the Gov. He was so incompetent during Covid and the numbers show it.
Yes, he's a schmuck who woefully mishandled the situation. However, I think it' worth remembering that it's not all on the governor, or even the state government in general. In some states, governors tried to do the right thing, but had a lot of trouble getting localities to cooperate (or had partisan judges overturning their orders). In other states, governors were asleep at the wheel but mayors, school administrators, and county-level officials picked up the slack (as did individuals getting vaccinated in reasonably high numbers, as in Florida).
 
It's obvious isn't it?

More Californians were alive at the end of the pandemic than any other state! ;)
Well, that's one way to look at it. :)
 
Massachusetts 8.58% 139194 128198

Texas 24.84% 555628 445085
Just to consider the stakes, consider these two, from near opposing ends of that list: Massachusetts and Texas. Imagine if Texas had succeeded in protecting its people only as well as Massachusetts did -- in other words, still a pretty miserable couple years, but one when mortality was up 8.58%, instead of 22.84%.

Well, in that case, 483,273 Texans would have died during the pandemic, instead of 555,628. The difference there is 72,355 extra deaths.

To put that in perspective, the 9/11 attacks resulted in 2,977 deaths. So, just the "extra" deaths in Texas, relative to Massachusetts, is pretty much equal to if Greg Abbott had carried out a terrorist attack on Texas, on the scale of 9/11, once a month from April 2020 through March 2022. We're talking a policy catastrophe of mind-boggling proportions.
 
Well, that's one way to look at it. :)
Now add in the fact that only 12 states had lower death rates than CA. The largest of those states, CO, has about 25% of the population of CA.
 
Live on an island
That probably helped Hawaii. After all, if they required testing by anyone coming into Hawaii by plane, that was practically everyone coming into the state, which gave them a tool that most places just didn't have (other than PR). However, it's worth pointing out that AK functions a lot like an island for purposes of the movement of people. The VAST majority of people traveling to Alaska come in by plane, and Alaska had the same theoretical tool as Hawaii did to test virtually everyone coming into the state. It was, for practical purposes, a population island. Yet it had one of the worst pandemic performances of any state.
 
That probably helped Hawaii. After all, if they required testing by anyone coming into Hawaii by plane, that was practically everyone coming into the state, which gave them a tool that most places just didn't have (other than PR). However, it's worth pointing out that AK functions a lot like an island for purposes of the movement of people. The VAST majority of people traveling to Alaska come in by plane, and Alaska had the same theoretical tool as Hawaii did to test virtually everyone coming into the state. It was, for practical purposes, a population island. Yet it had one of the worst pandemic performances of any state.
As a percent, or in total deaths?

Low population combined with complete rural lack of hospitals probably did Alaska in.

That, and the canadians.
 
As a percent, or in total deaths?

Low population combined with complete rural lack of hospitals probably did Alaska in.

That, and the canadians.

You really should try reading the OP - that is if you don't think it may infect you with liberal thoughts.
 
As a percent, or in total deaths?

Low population combined with complete rural lack of hospitals probably did Alaska in.

That, and the canadians.
In terms of percentage rise in mortality relative to pre-pandemic mortality.
 
You really should try reading the OP - that is if you don't think it may infect you with liberal thoughts.
I have liberal thoughts all the time. Fortunately, I'm fairly neutral, and I manage to control my impulses when it comes to posting about assumptions of others. I understand that people aren't binary, which you would think would be a simple enough concept. And yet, here we are.
 
In terms of percentage rise in mortality relative to pre-pandemic mortality.
So total numbers are lower, but low population drives the percent up.

IMO, Alaska problem, then, rested entirely on their access to medical care. Or...in this case, their lack of.

Hopefully their governing body sees that, and acts.

Probably won't, though.
 
So total numbers are lower, but low population drives the percent up.

IMO, Alaska problem, then, rested entirely on their access to medical care. Or...in this case, their lack of.

Hopefully their governing body sees that, and acts.

Probably won't, though.
Could be true. However, there’s really no excuse for most Alaskans having poor access to medical care. Notwithstanding the state’s self promoted-image, it’s a pretty urbanized place. The large majority of residents live very close to one of a few decently-sized cities. Maine, for example, actually has a much lower percentage of its residents living in urban areas (about 39%, compared to 66% in Alaska.).

Plus, Alaska is very rich in terms of GDP per capita, so they could afford to build out more healthcare access for that minority of the population that lives in more for rural areas. I expect that there were other factors, like low vaccination rates, and hostility to anti-Covid measures, which contributed to Alaska’s terrible performance.
 
I've never seen a more obvious repeat poster.

Account never used for 2 years, a bunch of people get banned, it suddenly gets activated after 3 whole years.

0 posts in 3 years and then suddenly HI, let me post 100 times a day.
 
I've never seen a more obvious repeat poster.

Account never used for 2 years, a bunch of people get banned, it suddenly gets activated after 3 whole years.

0 posts in 3 years and then suddenly HI, let me post 100 times a day.
I registered here a couple years ago, in addition to a few other sites, to try to figure out where I wanted to post. I ended up posting on Salon pretty much exclusively. Then Salon shut down their comment section. At that point I went to a place called Politicalhotline. I didn’t like the way moderation is done there, so I’ve gone back to a few of the other places I had posted before, to see which I like better.
 
While I agree that there can be problems with how Wuhan virus death are counted (Massachusetts recently admitted to seriously overcounting such deaths, now that the state isn’t trying to terrorize its citizens), there are also problems with going with “excess deaths.” Nor would people be necessarily happy with the results if the same process was used for other purposes. (A study recently found that Biden received 255,000 “excess votes” across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.) For counting which state “did the best” (for whatever reasons, a number outside of human control), the actual counted deaths per million is probably the best method available and for that, as of yesterday the top ten are:

  1. Hawaii
  2. Vermont
  3. Utah
  4. Alaska
  5. Washington
  6. Maine
  7. Oregon
  8. New Hampshire
  9. Nebraska
  10. North Carolina
The ten worst are:

  1. Mississippi
  2. Arizona
  3. Alabama
  4. Tennessee
  5. West Virginia
  6. Arkansas
  7. New Jersey
  8. Louisiana
  9. Michigan
  10. Oklahoma
 
Thanks for posting. What conclusions do you think we should draw from this?
Does this make it a bit clearer?

22-04-17 - Excess Mortality Rates.JPG
On average, the "MOAN" states have done 15.56% worse than the "LOAN" states while the "ROAN" states have done 26.88% worse than the "LOAN" states (and 10.05% worse than the "MOAN" states).
 
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