Came across some tweets from @BillPascrell and @CoryBooker about COVID funding for the states, NJ specifically, and decided to do a little (and i do mean a little) bit of digging (thread).

We all know that NJ is the state being hit hardest by COVID after NY — CDC data from earlier today (4/13/2020) shows we’re sitting at about 11% of national cases (chart by me, source url in the image).

But according to @BillPascrell ‘s tweet, NJ was receiving about 3% of the state-oriented funding from the COVID bill that passed recently (roughly $3.4B to NJ). Doing a little bit of math, that comes out to about $56k for each of our nearly 62,000 cases of COVID.

So I looked at a by-state breakdown of COVID funding, and I’m struggling to make sense of it (again, chart by me, source in the image). Of the ten states receiving the most funding, only 7 are in the top 10 of funding, and the order within doesn’t make immediate sense either.

NJ, MA, and LA are replaced by OH, GA, and NC in the top ten of funding. The latter three states combine for roughly 24,000 cases; NJ alone has nearly 62,000. NY has 34% of COVID cases, but is receiving only 5% of state COVID money; NJ has 11% of cases, and about 3% of the funds.

NC has 4520 cases, yet is receiving more total $ than NJ (~$4.1B vs ~$3.4B) On a simple per-case basis, NC is receiving close to $1M per case to NJ’s $56k. New York, the hardest-hit state in the Union, is getting $40k per case. GA is getting $316k per case; OH, $695k per case.

Disclaimer time: I haven’t looked into the specific preparedness of each state or how funding will be distributed by the states beyond the municipal allotment minimum of 45%. I’ll leave that to more politically-minded folks that are in-tune with the needs of the specific states.

That said, at a surface level this looks rather suspect when paired with the political trends of each state (colors on the graphs indicate 2016 presidential choice).

There are areas that weaken this argument, however, such as CA proportionally receiving 3x funding relative to case count, or LA receiving less than states with comparable case counts like IL.

Again, I haven’t gone in depth on the specific needs of each state. I’ll leave that to people who actually study politics, healthcare management, and economics. Some of the decisions just don’t seem to make sense at a surface level.

TL;DR: A simple look at the funds sent to the states by the COVID relief package doesn’t seem to mesh with the reality of case numbers. Only a basic relation between cases and funding was looked at; state-specific factors are not analyzed in this thread.