Where is New York’s Payoff with Fewer Covid Deaths?
To say that everyone has been sacrificing during 2020 would be an understatement. We all would like to think that following the stringent guidelines have saved our loved ones, neighbors, and those we will never meet. So let me share a disturbing calculation from a recent New York Times graphic.
Here it is. This graphic gives the breakdown by Covid wave. Pay attention to the last and most recent wave. I’ll call it the Third Winter Wave. Most everyone cuts the total New York slack for its total death toll. That first wave hit New York State residents, especially nursing home residents hard. You could say that the rest of the country learned from the sacrifices of New Yorkers.
The scenes of piled-up bodies in hospital morgues were shocking. The scramble to assemble ventilators, later not to be used is all part of the learning curve of how to treat Covid. However, by this 2020–2021 winter, hospitals all over the country should be on an equal footing. We have learned better patient care strategies and even have a few useful drugs.
Public health measures expect a payoff for sacrifice in terms of decreased transmission followed by decreased death rates. That’s what makes this back of the envelope calculation so disturbing:
It’s well known that New York has an open disagreement with Florida when it comes to Covid public health measures, because of their respective extreme stances on the role of government in a pandemic. Enlightened, especially civilized New Yorkers maintain six-feet and mask unfailingly even outside as a show of mutual respect. Floridians are regularly depicted partially clothed in Bacchanalian Superbowl or before February, beach bar parties. There’s an extreme spectrum of responses without question.
Schadenfreude expecting New Yorkers are not seeing the payback. Why in during this last wave, why did MORE New Yorkers die as a percentage (and absolute numbers) relative to Floridians.
Not doubt this is a complex question with multiple variables and possible explanations. Let’s see if we can thresh out the variables first. The great majority of those dying from Covid (95%) have comorbidities. Here are the latest compared with most the most recent data I could find with my (fairminded?) evaluation. (You can double-check me with the links at the bottom of the page.
The average Floridian is older, exercises slightly less and more likely to have high blood pressure. The average New Yorker may be slightly less likely to have diabetes and by extrapolation, slightly less prediabetes, but not by much.
To my mind, New York should have fewer total Covid deaths if public health measures decrease the number of Covid exposures.
It should come as no surprise that Floridians were more likely to be infected with Covid. At the time of writing, (2/14/2012), Florida recorded 1,821,937 infections to New York’s 1,568,969, an increase of 252,968 or about 16.1% over New York. We should expect a corresponding higher total death count from Florida. But we are not.
Maybe better treatments came about after New York took one for the country and taught the rest how to treat the Covid. We did not see the first documented, effective treatment from Remdesivir in mid-Summer and monoclonal antibodies in October, 2021, when President Trump famously received Regeneron before FDA approval. By this time, Floridians had suffered a comparable number of infections as New York over the summer, matching the Spring.
So why aren’t New Yorkers reaping the gains of being mindful citizens? Some might propose that more New Yorkers are getting infected from being indoors. The superimposition of the two graphs above does not support that supposition. The curve of new cases appears almost perfectly aligned for the Third Wave taking place around Thanksgiving.
Others suggest Vitamin D from that strong Floridian sunshine can prevent Covid complications. From my incomplete review of the literature, that seems plausible.
Here’s one more possibility that came to my mind. I wonder if Covid-light exposure is immunizing. There is an undefined viral-dosing zone that does not overwhelm the nose’s defenses, but might generate a lasting memory immune reaction or that exposing those who are least likely to have complications is a good public health strategy. While I have only seen this presented in the media negatively, the Great Barrington Declaration may have merit.
The Great Barrington Declaration calls for individuals at significantly lower risk of dying from COVID-19 — as well as those at higher risk who so wish — to be allowed to resume their normal lives, working normally at their usual workplaces rather than from home, socialising in bars and restaurants, and gathering at sporting and cultural events. The declaration claims that increased infection of those at lower risk would lead to a build-up of immunity in the population that would eventually also protect those at higher risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
New Yorkers could be right that without these harsh measures, things could have been worse, or that focusing on mortality alone ignores long-term side effects of Covid infection. These are criticisms weight more than one value other than mortality. However, mortality should vary directly with Covid long-term disabilities.
The original strategy of Flattening the Curve prevented hospitals from being overrun and that the final chapters in this shared saga are yet to play out.
In either case, both States chose different strategies and it is too far along for either to change. Perhaps when the dust settles and a full accounting takes place, it will be clearer which State chose more wisely.
Note: The views expressed are solely my own. They do not represent any organizations where I am employed or am a member.
References for data:
