I don't blame NY/Pa/NJ for the horrible result. It was a new virus and nobody knew how to treat it. The other states have benefitted from their mistakes and we have learned. I really don't blame them. Everyone is learning. Our deaths are lower because we learned from their mistakes, which were made in good faith.Booray said:
For context, here is what the author of the chart says in explanation
Using "cases" as a headline number, which the media has done lately, gives very little information about how well or poorly those cases are being handled. A better metric is the Case Fatality Rate (CFR), which is deaths divided by confirmed cases. CFR measures the percentage of people in a state who've tested positive for COVID that actually end up dying from it.
A high fatality rate can be caused by several factors.
Failing to protect older populations. States with a high percentage of older residents are at greater risk of deaths. How well a state protects its older population is a key to keeping the death rate down.
Not enough testing. States that don't have enough testing not only reduce the denominator in the Case Fatality Rate calculation, they also leave more people uncertain about whether they are infected. People unknowingly infected may be at a greater risk of infecting at-risk populations like the elderly.
While infinitely better than using "cases" to judge how a state is handling the coronavirus outbreak, CFR is still not a perfect measure.
CFR can be skewed if deaths are undercounted or overcounted. For example, if a death is counted as a COVID death just because the person tested positive for it, despite the fact that the person's primary cause of death was something else, it's not an accurate count. But, since so many elderly patients have comorbidities such as diabetes and hypertension, determining the cause of death can be difficult.
Also, the Case Fatality Rate only counts cases that have been confirmed through testing. A different measure, the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR), calculates the fatality rate based on estimates of the TOTAL number of infected people, not just those who have been tested. Antibody testing has found that the actual number of infected people is as much as ten times higher than the confirmed cases, meaning the IFR may be ten times lower than the CFR numbers listed here.
Still, disparities between states will exist no matter the measure used. Probably the most important factor that has led to disparities in death rates is whether states were able to "flatten the curve" by protecting the vulnerable in the early months of the outbreak. Most of the states with the worst Case Fatality Rates had bad outbreaks among the elderly early on.
States that kept fatalities low during the spring, meanwhile, are benefiting from several factors keeping their fatality rates down. As recent research from JP Morgan says, ".. we do not see cases in southern/western states resulting in mortality rates similar to those observed in the Northeast during March and April. likely due to a larger % of mild and asymptomatic cases, a younger average age, better treatment, and more testing."
While deaths and rates will likely rise in states that have not developed much in the way of herd immunity, the above factors will hopefully keep the CFR significantly lower.
While I don't blame them or preach at them, I damn sure don't won't a lecture from Cuomo and the NYTimes on how we're screwing up.