I track daily the Covid numbers out of morbid personal interest. Recently I started running some simple data and began to notice an unsurprising phenomenon (it ought to be surprising but I am not surprised I wasn’t surprised).
Basically, the counts appear to be partisan. Maybe the vrus just behaves differently in Red States? But anyway, I just looked at the confirmed death count per total confirmed cases from the Johns Hopkins Coronavrus Dashboard.
What I noticed was once you do that a pattern emerges. States with Republican Governors seem to much better death per confirmed case rates.
The median number of deaths per case is 27. Arizona and Mississippi both come in at the median number. The numbers below the median means the more deaths per confirmed case and the higher number the fewer deaths per case.
Here is how it breaks out:
Higher than the Median R
|
18
|
Higher than the Median D
|
7
|
Median R
|
2
|
Median D
|
0
|
Lower than the Median R
|
7
|
Lower than the Median D
|
16
|
Now I know red states have a different population density in many cases and so forth that could explain some of this. Climate may or may not have an impact (although wouldn’t that have more impact on spread and less on death per confirmed case).
That said, states with like characteristics, but with Governors of different parties you see them on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Kentucky v Tennessee are geographically similar, both have two modest urban centers and yet Kentucky, with a Dem Governor, shows a death per case rate well below the median while Tennessee, with a Rep Governor, comes in high above the median. Kansas (D Governor) and Nebraska (R Governor) as well reside on opposite ends of the spectrum.
On the population density front, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina all have major population centers, and yet all are above the median.
Now I know counting deaths is a lagging indicator, and I know states are struggling to get counts from nursing homes and other things, but, everyone is suffering from the same strain on that front to a certain degree. You can argue that the amount of testing in each state could impact that as well, but testing per capita is all over the map no matter what end of the spectrum you look at (the green line on the graphic).
This tells me there is likely some other factor at play here, probably something partisan in nature.