there seems to be a lot of grandstanding by the lockdown governors (who are almost invariably democrats as this issue has become distressingly partisan) but when one looks at red state vs blue state outcomes, it raises some serious questions.

(graph from david steinmier, PhD)

the blue states are faring noticeably less well than the red.

this has been true all along.

interestingly, red states are noticeably fatter which is a significant cov risk enhancer (and links to others like diabetes)

so, ceteris paribus, you'd expect more red state deaths.

the rejoinder to this has always been "but density!" but this has been a surprisingly poor predictor of death rates globally.

most of the data is highly uncorrelated with a few outliers driving outcomes. county level is a little better, but not great. globally, it's worse.

this makes more sense when you consider that this is actually how flu often works.

cites are, obviously, better places for rapid spread. but, this was true last year and 10 years ago too.

so people who live there have more pre-existing immunity and are harder to infect.

so, the very thing that makes them more vulnerable also makes them more prone to have resistance.

nature and evolution are fun that way.

so density is not the obvious issue many have tried to make it out to be.

but the effects of lockdown are not limited to disease:

you can also see who the big outliers are on rise in unemployment.

they have been trying to cast this as heroic virus suppression, but really, it's just panic driven adoption of pseudoscience resulting in self-harm.

and this, again, has a strong political bias:

the party claiming to be the "party of science" is nothing of the sort.

let's face it, neither team donkey nor team elephant has been any good on covid outside of a few bright spots like @govkristinoem

but the donks are really going all in on preachy "scientism."

but the record on these lockdown policies is clear:

they are staggeringly expensive,

they inflict massive harm on lives, mental health, and education,

they cause big spikes in deaths of despair,

and they do not work.

to admit this is political suicide for their architects, so do not expect that

they have to brazen this out, get bailouts, and will lie cheat to pin medals on themselves and claim to be heroes

there is no other choice for a politician. but it's a terrible course for a society

biblio:

source for graphs is here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/23/republican-state-legislatures-are-positively-correlated-with-obesity-democrat-legislatures-with-death-from-coronavirus/