The chart above represents the COVID-19 data for the United States as of the end of yesterday per Worldometer. I wanted to follow up on my diary from last weekend where I expressed concerns about the accuracy of the data coming from states with Republican Governors, and in particular states with Governors that are Trump loyalists. The logic gap in reported data is getting more pronounced as time goes on, and I think this will have serious public health consequences. It appears likely that multiple Republican Governors are suppressing their COVID data for political purposes.
A week later, and three of the four largest Republican led states, Texas, Florida and Georgia, are clearly having major outbreaks based on news reports. Texas has documented outbreaks at nursing homes and universities, yet Texas’ COVID case and mortality numbers are very low for a state that size despite reports that hospitals in Texas are starting to get deluged with patients. Georgia hospitalizations are also spiking yet they still have modest case rates for a state that size. Florida is a well documented mess that I covered last week.
I updated the table based on the party affiliation of the Governor:
COVID SUMMARY BY GOVERNOR'S PARTY
|
DEMOCRATIC |
REPUBLICAN |
CASES |
341,014 |
68,800 |
DEATHS |
6,976 |
1,432 |
POP. |
174.9M |
152.6M |
CASES/100K |
137.8 |
45.1 |
DEATHS/100K |
4.00 |
0.94 |
Among the comments I received last week was that maybe some of the states were just lagging, yet a week later, with documented outbreaks throughout the Republican states, there is still a massive disparity in COVID cases and mortality based on what party the Governor belongs to. I am struggling to come up with scientific rationale for why this is happening. We covered population density in the previous diary, so I would rather skip those arguments.
In thinking this through I wondered if maybe the Republican Governors were doing something that the Democratic Governors were not. After all, Trump has repeatedly complimented Republican Governors for what a great job they were doing keeping case rates low in their states. So, I did another analysis based on whether a state had early rules or policies on Social Distancing.
COVID Summary by social distancing rules in state (as of 3/17)
|
SD Rules |
no/light sd Rules |
Cases |
260,240 |
49,574 |
deaths |
7,366 |
1,042 |
pop. |
200.2M |
127.3M |
cases/100k |
130.0 |
38.9 |
deaths/100k |
3.68 |
0.82 |
I made some subjective judgments in classifying states we can debate. I started off with all the Republican led states in the “NO/Light SD Rules” category, and all the Democratic led states in the “SD Rules” category, then made the following adjustments:
- Republican Governors included in SD rules: OH, NH, VT, MA, MD
- Democratic Governors included in No/Light SD rules: ME
I also wanted to see how the case data has developed in the last week based on Governors’ policies:
CHANGE IN CASES AND MORTALITY BY SD POLICY
|
SD RULES |
NO/LIGHT SD RULES |
CASE INCREASE IN WEEK |
155,726 |
31,073 |
% CASE INCREASE |
49.0% |
68.0% |
MORTALITY INCREASE IN WEEK |
5,464 |
731 |
% MORTALITY INCREASE |
187.3% |
135.1% |
The problem is, the data gets weirder when I adjust for the Republican Governors that were actually following health experts’ recommendations. A person was 3.3x as likely to have COVID and about 4.5x as likely to have died from COVID in a state that has Social Distancing rules than he or she was in a state that did not. The increase in cases and the rate of increase in cases, even when adjusting for population, does not make any sense because it would appear to be saying the Social Distancing policies are actually harmful.
IF THIS DATA IS ACCURATE, it appears that we should be following the lead of states like Florida, Texas and Georgia, and ignoring Social Distancing and just go about our lives normally. Or, the data coming out of Trump-friendly red states is simply wrong.
Interestingly, despite fairly compelling data arguing against in favor of NO Social Distancing, the states all seem to be going the other direction in policy in the last few days. This would indicate that even Trump-friendly Republican Governors know their data is grossly understating the true COVID problem in their states. In other words, they know their data is bullshit or they would not be changing their policies.
Accurate data is absolutely critical in every situation, and particularly one like our pandemic where lives are literally at stake. I know that all the data has issues, but I also think that most of the people collecting this data are doing the best they can. The issue here is that some of the data does not make any sense. Either there needs to be an explanation for why this is happening, or an acknowledgement that the data is simply false. There appears to be a systematic and persistent falsification of the data for political purposes by Trump’s closest Governor allies, and that should not be tolerated.