Skip to content

47 thoughts on “Raw Data: COVID-19 Deaths By State”

  3. KawSunflower

    The time the chart was added appears to have been 6:52 PM, the above comment is from 8:01 PM - I see 10 red columns. Was one added?

    1. KawSunflower

      And each time stamp is obviously adjusted for Pacific time, since my comment was post ef d at 2:02 AM on Thursday.

    1. Jasper_in_Boston

      Some of it may have to do with density. But the bulk of the Northeast's above average death toll was generated during the first wave, and my hunch the biggest factor there is the that the region serves as the country's principle conduit to Europe.

      2. haddockbranzini

        Also corporate events. MA had a major breakout early on because of a Biogen conference. And despite Trump's fictional Chin-er travel ban, there were still flights packed with Chinese students landing in Logan Airport every single day.

    2. jte21

      I think that has to be a big part of it -- the NYC metro area, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, etc. are very dense, and home to a lot of working class and multi-generational households that couldn't easily distance, and older-than-average residents with comorbidities. Residents in those cities also use public transportation a lot, which is where Covid really got started.

  6. Atticus

    Hmm. Florida right in the middle and we've been pretty much open for many months and schools have been open since August. Thank goodness for Governor DeSantis.

      1. Atticus

        Give me a break. That's the standard liberal talking points for people who can't accept maybe the extreme lockdowns and keeping kids out of school all year maybe wasn't necessary.

        1. Atticus

          Just to be clear, I'm not one of these anti-mask nuts and I do agree that some forms of shut downs were necessary. Just that some states took it way too far. And the fact that some schools are still closed is criminal.

          1. Jerry O'Brien

            A lot of people agree that schools should have reopened sooner. Maybe summer school will be popular this year, but by August, all will be open, I think.

          2. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

            LOL.

            I know who you are -- you're the professional rightwing agitator who stood unmasked in front of the Michigan State Police, spewing your saliva toward them while bellowing to liberate the Great Lakes State.

          3. Atticus

            Monty, you are confusing me with someone else. I haven't been inside a public building without wearing a mask in about a year. And I've never to MI.

    3. Jerry O'Brien

      Florida hasn't compared so well lately. They are ninth-highest in deaths per million over the past four weeks.

    4. FreakyBeaky

      Imagine how low Florida's covid numbers would if they'd locked down just a bit more ...

      A person could argue that since CA's and FL's numbers are close, CA's lockdowns & mask mandates & etc. weren't any better than doing what FL did. That's not the way I see it. CA's lockdowns kept us in the middle of the pack. Otherwise we'd be like New York, not Florida. It was going way, way sideways here before lockdown #2.

      Thank god for DeSantis being far, far away. 🙂

    1. Solar

      Tell that to the UK.

      Being an island is a big advantage, but for it to matter, leaders still have to make the right decisions at the time it matters.

        1. Solar

          The UK's problem wasn't its size, it was that at the start of the pandemic its government thought they could ride it out and refused to implement any serious measures to control the spread. It wasn't until they had become the biggest hotspot in Europe and Boris himself got sick when they started to take it seriously.

          1. lawnorder

            England in particular also has a very high population density. Of course, Taiwan has an even higher population density, so that's obviously not determinative.

  8. cephalopod

    It is clear that being a large, urbanized state is a risk factor. It is just much harder to control spread when people live in high density. The East Coast had the double whammy of high density and an early outbreak, when testing was hard to get and we knew less about effective prevention.

    But that just highlights how bad North and South Dakota are. They are very rural, and should look more like Vermont, Maine, Oregon, or Wyoming. But they totally skrewed themselves over, and did so long after we knew what worked to slow spread.

  11. tigersharktoo

    And the R's in CA want to recall Newsom because of his "failure"?

    Chart shows pretty good results.

    What are their alternatives? North and South Dakota?

    1. rick_jones

      Rs' motivations in California aside, Newsom was extremely lucky the several SF Bay Area counties were out ahead of and more persistent than he was for shelter-in-place and restrictions and such, or Northern California would have looked more like Southern California. California's overall may be "only" 1554 cumulative deaths/million, but Southern California's is 1892 (Between Illinois and Arkansas), with Northern California at 1028 (between Colorado and New Hampshire)

    2. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      They want to recall Newsom because the GQP cannot win on a level playing field in California. Recall is a thumb on the scale.

  12. skeptonomist

    Obviously size, presumably population in this graph, is not a dominant factor. Density may be one factor, but the most populous states have big cities but also lots of rural low density areas. To evaluate the effect of density it would probably be necessary to go down to at least the county level. There could be many other factors - influx from Europe and China, state and local rules, fraction of rule-defiers, etc. etc. By this time it is clear that there is no one magic factor. To get a valid mathematical treatment, which is the only way to decide ultimately, all factors will have to be included on the appropriate geographical scale. This is going to take some time to sort out.

    1. ey81

      Also, given how various states, countries, and areas have risen and fallen in relative ranking, any conclusions prior to the end of the pandemic should be exceptionally humble and tentative (and therefore wholly out of place on the internet).

  13. bharshaw

    I see Florida and Ohio are side by side. At least for a while they had dissimilar policies, IIRC. I wonder what the graph would look like if you sorted by average age.

    1. Rana_pipiens

      "I wonder what the graph would look like if you sorted by average age."

      This.

      Utah, sixth from the bottom, has the lowest average age of any state. I wouldn't be surprised if it has the lowest death rate per case*. (*Estimated, not official, because you need to control for level of testing, either through the positivity rate, or tests administered per million population.)

      On the other hand, the correlation between population density and cases is probably why Utah isn't vying for lowest death rate with Hawaii. Utah is in the top ten most urban** states. While Hawaii is even more urban, it has the advantage of being a chain of islands.

      (**Before you express incredulity -- Population in dry states crowds into the few spots with water.)

  16. golack

    There is also apparent seasonality with the virus.
    So many variables, so little time....

    But under any conditions, wearing masks helps.

Comments are closed.