Utah Rated #1 in Covid-19 Handling, Big Lockdown States the Worst

April 11, 2022

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1:04 pm

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53 comments

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Economics

State pandemic performance by the NBER, # annotations by Mish

Please consider the Final Report Card on Response to Covid-19 by the NBER.

The study analyzed the economy, education, and mortality.
For economic performance the NBER used two measures: unemployment and GDP by state.
For education, the NBER used a single metric: the Burbio cumulative in-person instruction percentage for the complete 2020-2021 school year, with hybrid instruction weighted half.
For mortality the NBER used two measures: COVID-associated deaths reported to the CDC and all-cause excess mortality.

Overall Results

The outcomes in NJ, NY, and CA were among the worst in all three categories: morality, economy, and schooling.
UT, NE, and VT were leaders in all three categories.
The scores have a clear spatial pattern, perhaps reflecting spatial correlations in demographic, economic, and political variables.
IL, NM, CO, and CA are outliers among their geographic neighbors in the direction of low combined scores.
FL, AR, WV, and UT are outliers in the other direction.

Education

*State pandemic performance by the NBER via Burbio*

School closures may ultimately prove to be the most costly policy decision of the pandemic era in both economic and mortality terms. One study found that school closures at the end of the previous 2019-2020 school year are associated with 13.8 million years of life lost.
An NIH analysis found that life expectancy for high school graduates is 4 to 6 years longer than high school dropouts.
The OECD estimates that learning losses from pandemic era school closures could cause a 3% decline in lifetime earnings, and that a loss of just one third of a year of learning has a long-term economic impact of $14 trillion.
Unlike mortality or economic outcomes, closing public schools was entirely under the control of policymakers. Almost all private schools were open.

The worst five states in order were Washington, Maryland, Oregon, California, and DC (last).

The best states in order were Wyoming (best), Arkansas, Florida, South Dakota, and Utah.

For all the pissing and moaning about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, not only was Florida #3 in keeping schools open, Florida was #6 overall.

A Ratings

Utah (#1), Vermont, Montana, South Dakota, Florida, New Hampshire, Maine, Arkansas.

F Ratings

Illinois (#46), California (#47) New Mexico (#48)

F- Ratings

New York (#49), DC (#50), New Jersey (#51)

This post originated at MishTalk.Com.

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amigator

3 years ago

This study will never be discussed on any mainstream media except here. Thanks Mish!

Six000mileyear

3 years ago

Philadelphia wants to appeal.

Felix_Mish

3 years ago

@Greenmountain

Judging by excess deaths, Vermont’s very good numbers were not from vaccines. First, the best numbers preceded the vaccines. Second, vaccines clearly lowered excess deaths nationwide from about April to September, 2021. After that, they seem to cause excess deaths. (Northern, vaccinated states were the excess death-mobiles at the end of Covid’s run.)

Vaccines seemed to delay excess deaths until the less deadly Omicron was the Covid of choice. So, in a way, vaccines flattened the curve until Covid became a bad cold.

Most of this simplistic data analysis is bogus – including what I just wrote. Viruses tend to spread and reproduce in exponential (as opposed to linear) ways. Imagine your car with an exponential steering wheel. That is, you turn the wheel a ways and your car turns to follow the road. So, not much of interest happens. But, rather suddenly and inherently unpredictably, a tad extra turning puts you in to a spin or causes you to flip.

thimk

3 years ago

perhaps we all can agree that the efficacy of lock downs is minimal . Also Look at the the subsequent residual,qualitative and long term effects . we really blew this one guys. Maybe we added trillions to long term debt needlessly.

StukiMoi

3 years ago

“School closures may ultimately prove to be the most costly policy decision of the pandemic era in both economic and mortality terms. One study found that school closures at the end of the previous 2019-2020 school year are associated with 13.8 million years of life lost.”

Of course anyone literate have known for years that the less “schooling”, the greater the population growth…. That means, LESS schooling is associated with more lives “won.”

But hey, noone aspiring to literacy would bother to give the sort of moronic clowns who are spitting out this sort of drivel even the time of day, anyway. Literates and the producers of, and audience for, this entire genre of purely nonsensical pap, literally live in two entirely different worlds.

Casual_Observer2020

3 years ago

If you don’t believe NBER recession calls why would trust their data on anything else ? It’s economic research which is hugely flawed.

Webej

3 years ago

Interesting, but so many confounding variables that it is hard to draw far-reaching conclusions.

(I’ve already drawn them on the basis of other data)

thimk

3 years ago

Hmm private schools were allowed to operate , even in Caly – not sure I can rationalize that , but what the public schools system did was egregious . It seems that the unions leveraged the crisis for political power and money . glad I don’t have any children, they took it on the chin.

Please don’t move to Florida , insurance is high and you won’t like humidity .

ajc1970

3 years ago

Reply to thimk

Private schools were forced shut in Oregon

There was a loophole for K-3. Our kids’ school applied for a permit to open as daycare for “essential workers” and kept its K-3 open that way

Carl_R

3 years ago

Re: “The outcomes in NJ, NY, and CA were among the worst in all three categories: morality, economy, and schooling.”

While I do think there are also some morality issues, I believe you meant mortality.

Clearly Utah had an exceptionally low mortality. I suspect that, in part at least, is due to the high Mormon population. Mormons tend to live a much healthier lifestyle than the average population. Similarly, Nebraska may have benefited from their high 7th Day Adventist population for the same reason. The other huge benefit that Nebraska had is that Nebraska has a tradition of being non-partisan. [When running for legislature, for example, you are not allowed to list a party affiliation.] The Governor, a Republican, worked with Democrat mayors, and they presented a united front. When a press release was issued, it came from then as a group, not from one party or the other.

Counter

3 years ago

What about the quality of education? I know a lot of smart families homeschooling their kids. Their children always score higher and are more advanced than public school age groups. I am not sure public schools are the best route of education these days.

Carl_R

3 years ago

Reply to Counter

As far as quality of education, there is no question that homeschooling kids produces the best education. Mine we both homeschooled, and both were National Merit Scholars. That said, it is not without it’s disadvantages, which should also be considered. First, it is incredibly expensive. Start with the regular taxes for public school, which you still have to pay. Next, factor in the opportunity of a non-working parent. Also add in costs for quality curricula and field trips. It adds up, quickly. Then factor in that the kids don’t have the normal social interaction (in some ways good, in other ways bad) that other children have, and it becomes a not-easy question.

Billy

3 years ago

I’d like to know which politician gained the most wealth during the last 2 years.

I’d also like to know which companies did too.

It’s sad to see that with technology, American citizens are no closer to transparency in government. Especially when it comes to elections. At least it’s nice to see that they are finally counting the unionizing votes which probably means the unions are already corrupt. Another thing that needs transparency.

ILHawk

3 years ago

Most of the F states… High density populations and or higher minority percentages.

Most A states… Low density populations and VERY WHITE meaning better medical care.

Might be correlated.

Christoball

3 years ago

Reply to ILHawk

There is probably a correlation between states with different proportions of illegal and legal immigrants. It is probably not a white vs non white issue. Living in the shadows and being sneaky is impoverishing. You cannot have effective social services and open borders. The two cannot exist in the same room. They are like oil and vinegar.

Mike 2112

3 years ago

Reply to ILHawk

You think ppl in Vermont get better HCare than ppl in NY???

My wife was an RN at a well-known Manhattan hospital. It wasnot uncommon for her to have an Arab sheik in one room of her cardiac unit and a person from the projects in the next room.

Vermont, and pretty much all low denisty states, do not tend to have world-class hospitals.

Christoball

3 years ago

No surprise that California was worse in Morality.

Christoball

3 years ago

Reply to Christoball

“The outcomes in NJ, NY, and CA were among the worst in all three categories: morality, economy, and schooling.”

danis

3 years ago

Lol, I do remember when Mish was the one pissing and moaning! It’s ok we still love ya MIsh.

RonJ

3 years ago

The lockdowns shifted cases. They didn’t eliminate cases. Two weeks to bend the curve, not two weeks to collapse the curve to ZERO. Florida opened up Disney World while California kept Disneyland closed. Both had a surge in cases, just in different time frames. The curves in cases in both states was similar. States with mask mandates fared about the same as those without mandates. As Doctor Wen recently admitted, cloth masks were just face decoration. That was known long before Covid.

Aerosol virus particles also did not stop before they got 6 feet. That number was chosen because it wasn’t practical to space people

even farther apart.

There were a number of experts who said that the lockdowns would cause more harm than the virus. They were of coarse, ignored, until Johns Hopkins did a study, recently published. In fact, Fauci and Collins colluded to smear those experts who came up with the Great Barrington Declaration.

Zardoz

3 years ago

Reply to RonJ

But what about Invermectin? Here I am wit a Golden Kookie to award, but you kooks are slacking. Guess I need to go over to zero hedge… but they already have so many Golden Kookies it doesn’t seem worth the effort.

Q must be so disappointed.

RonJ

3 years ago

Reply to Zardoz

A comedy Store award for you.

Together had to rig the Ivermectin trial, in order for it to fail. The FLCCC dose is larger as well as the duration of treatment, than the Together trial.

Your jokes don’t dispute the medical facts.

Dr. Odyssey

3 years ago

Reply to Zardoz

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are facing potential litigation from a federal grand jury for violating federal law and distorting COVID-19 figures early in the pandemic to justify lockdowns and other extreme mitigation policies.https://www.naturalhealth365.com/lawmakers-accuse-cdc-and-fda-of-statistical-manipulation-of-covid-19-data.html

Using Ministry of Health data on more than 1.2 million people, researchers found that a second booster dose of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine offered protection against significant COVID-19 infections for six weeks. But protection against all virus infections started to drop quickly after four weeks and nearly disappeared after eight weeks, according to the study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.https://www.theepochtimes.com/large-study-finds-that-protection-against-covid-19-from-4th-shot-drops-quickly_4387623.html

80% of serious COVID cases are fully vaccinated’ says Ichilov hospital director

Vaccine has “no significance regarding severe illness,” says Prof. Jacob Giris.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321674

Over One Thousand Scientific Studies Demonstrate That the COVID-19 Vaccines Are Dangerous

https://www.saveusnow.org.uk/covid-vaccine-scientific-proof-lethal/

ajc1970

3 years ago

Reply to RonJ

The anti-lockdown experts weren’t just ignored, they were actively censored from the public debate

JJ Johnson

3 years ago

Reply to RonJ

Florida opened up Disney World? Kinda. I was there a year ago. 25% max capacity, very strict with masks, city of Orlando had mandated masks everywhere. International drive was a ghost town, comparatively.

Watched the local news & the vax numbers they were reporting were very high in Orlando compared to most of the country.

I was visiting from MN where we had more “freedoms” than Orlando, at that time. No mandates, schools were virtual if they chose to be (most did).

I think people are

skewing what really happened in areas and the talking heads just talked louder to convince people.

RonJ

3 years ago

Reply to JJ Johnson

While Disney World had 25% capacity, Disneyland had ZERO capacity. Critics screamed Desantis was going to cause a million deaths from opening up the state. When Disneyland finally opened, it also was not 100% capacity.

FlyNavy1

3 years ago

What a shock. The socialists fail. Yet again.

quantumatoms

3 years ago

Funny. When I look at the paper, I see a bunch of readily disputed assumptions and a failure to address alternative explanations (at least they mentioned age as a factor). This is the work of partisan quackery in one form or another. Best to file this paper under the label “propaganda.”

shamrock

3 years ago

Reply to quantumatoms

Agreed. In fact there are lots of ways to rank. For example, wallethub had Maryland #1 and Utah #47. Pretty much the exact opposite. https://wallethub.com/edu/safest-states-during-covid/86567

SAKMAN1

3 years ago

Reply to quantumatoms

My “spidy sense” also gives me the sense that these metrics were designed to create the desired outcomes.

JJ Johnson

3 years ago

Reply to quantumatoms

MN GDP….looking really crappy here, I know.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MNNGSP

vanderlyn

3 years ago

USA did almost twice as bad as rest of world on an excess mortality rate, per capita. source is economist newspaper. obesity, and stupidity and less vaxxed seem to be the correlation.

Zardoz

3 years ago

Reply to vanderlyn

The fat and dumb demographic has put itself in the sights of natural selection, or as they like to call it “god’s will”

Christoball

3 years ago

Reply to vanderlyn

The US had a more significant Baby Boom after WWII than the rest of the world, so of course we are going to have higher numbers with respect to total population. Also in Europe and Asia many people who would have grown old by now died in WWII. Within the Axis of evil powers, many people died for their country and never lived long enough to be here today.

vanderlyn

3 years ago

Reply to Christoball

nah. excess mortality above the normal death rates past few years mitigates all that stuff. us is obese. and less vaxxed than rich world. and it became some idiotic political tool here more than most places. the hermann cain award affect if you will. and yes, the over masked and kooky left wing here also made it political as hell here.

Christoball

3 years ago

Reply to vanderlyn

My neighbor is a Stanford trained epidemiologist. He says it will be 10 years before the real numbers come out. Numbers that are not skewed by politics and agendas. He is sympathetic but not certain of my findings.

vanderlyn

3 years ago

Reply to Christoball

the anthropologist i know said end of 2019, when it was just in wuhan, that it would be 2 to 5 years for this plague to run her course. and yes, agree the real analysis and ‘truth” world wide will be a decade or more off. but as it stands 2 and half years from wuhan ground zero, US is worst outcome in rich world by far. might change of course. excess mortality rates the best way to see closest to the truth. per economist newspaper which reports weekly, the botton 25% of human primates have not been jabbed yet at more than small percent of their populations. the poor among our species. the poorest 25% that is.

RonJ

3 years ago

Reply to vanderlyn

Dr. Zelenko treated some 400 high risk patients, such as those with obesity, during the deadliest Alpha variant, with only 1% hospitalized and .5% died. His treatment therapy was later obstructed. There never was a protocol for early treatment, created, even one that did not involve prescription pharmaceuticals. Anti-hystamines are anti-inflammatory. One can get those over the counter. Nebulizing food grade hydrogen peroxide is helpful in treating airborne viruses. I learned about these things piecemeal, on my own, not from any concerted effort by the medical establishment, to inform the public.

Hospital was the only approved treatment. A drug that failed on safety was the standard of care, along with ventilators, which had their own negative issues.

vanderlyn

3 years ago

Reply to RonJ

big pharma and big gov and big hospitals all have captured the indusstry of actual caring for our health. it’s horrible in US. i’m dual citizen with US and eu country. no comparison on what priorities are in EU v US. US is all about the benjamins.

shamrock

3 years ago

Seems like the education component was a foregone conclusion. Conclusion: in person = good, remote = bad. Measure used: Percentage of in person schooling received. BS. Maybe measure educational results, like change in standardized test scores or something.

vanderlyn

3 years ago

the actual science world wide points to obesity, age and vaccination rates for death rates. also whether people live on top of each other in multi generational homes, where grandpa is exposed to many more people than in rich, more rural settings…………..

the counties and towns and jurisdictions, world wide where the old were isolated, seemed to have fared the best with excess mortality rates per capita.

i lived in rural area for first year of covid, redwood forest/wine country. easy to avoid humans. 2nd year of the plague, i was in brooklyn among hasidic jews, and caribbean immigrants. the former unmasked and unvaxxed. the latter group, masked and unvaxxed. high mortality rates among both.

Doug78

3 years ago

Florida is the only high-population state to get a good combined rating. The others are sparsely-populated so Florida is the true outer.

TexasTim65

3 years ago

Reply to Doug78

Warm weather allows Floridians to be outside pretty much all year around (though we like our indoor AC in the summer, LOL) and getting plenty of sunshine (vitamin D).

KidHorn

3 years ago

Reply to TexasTim65

True, but the government didn’t tell everyone to stay inside with masks on.

Doug78

3 years ago

Reply to TexasTim65

VT has a lot of cold winters so that doesn’t account for VT’s low rate.

FlyNavy1

3 years ago

Reply to Doug78

Florida’s numbers are WAY better on an age-adjusted statistical basis. DeSantis 2024.

TLinFL

3 years ago

Reply to Doug78

Florida does not count non-residents in infections or deaths. I don’t know if other states do the same.

Doug78

3 years ago

Reply to TLinFL

Yes they did. They were in a separate category but aggregated back in. Florida’s outperformance is merited.

LawrenceBird

3 years ago

Funny then how VT ends up #3 when its policies were not much different than “big lockdown states”

Greenmountain

3 years ago

Reply to LawrenceBird

Agree and we also have a very old population – so the risk of death was probably higher here. I would attribute it to the fact that we got vaccinated. Overall Vermonters were pretty compliant on that front. But equally surprising is how FL did, although my sense is that while a lot of folks retire there, population trends younger.

TexasTim65

3 years ago

Reply to Greenmountain

Florida (like Arizona) experiences wild swings in population during the year. In the winter months it swells with retirees/snowbirds and in the summer months they all go back north to escape the oppressive humidity.

It’s possible that migration contributed to the results in unexpected ways (ie someone who was positive here but didn’t test, returned home and tested positive there or even died there etc).

Maximus_Minimus

3 years ago

Reply to Greenmountain

Probably lots of sunshine (FL) and people spending time outside has a lot to do with it.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise since flu seasons fluctuate for the same reason.

Some agency did a test with UV light, kills viruses like a charm.

Doug78

3 years ago

Reply to LawrenceBird

VT has probably the most dispersed population of all the states.

Utah Rated #1 in Covid-19 Handling, Big Lockdown States the Worst

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