holy guacamole.
Probably the biggest demographic difference between red and blue is the rural/urban distinction. By June, bigger cities had already suffered the worst onslaught, and the infection was creeping into smaller towns and more rural areas. Correlations have little explanatory power.A '10,000' means 1% of the state's population has tested positive of COVID since June 1. June 1 was chosen as it was around that time that countries worldwide that had been sucker-punched months before had the opportunity to apply proven preventative measures.
The results suggest a strong correlation between a state's political leanings and its ability to employ proven science to slow the spread of COVID.
I had not noticed it was since June 1st. Seems manipulative indeed... next time I'll be more careful when I share things that align with my pre-existing beliefs too much. I'm not gonna delete my post. Apparently his website does that work for me. (cc b_b)
There's a saying that believing is seeing. It's so much easier to see through the garbage that doesn't confirm your worldview than the garbage that does. Even Gregor Mendel made shit up. He just happened to be basically correct. But being correct about a conclusion, and being sound on the data from which that conclusion is derived sometimes aren't closely linked. The conclusion that conservative leaning areas in America could have done a better job with covid preparedness, given the disaster that was NY, NoLa, Detroit, etc, seems self-evident. But that doesn't mean that we should look for every opportunity to find another way to say, "Fuck Texas." I think part of the reason that the conservative areas got themselves into that mess was that they were too busy finding new ways to say, "Fuck NY and CA."
I think the premise of beginning in June, was because by that point, every major country in the world had a robust COVID plan in place. So any increased infection rate would be due to poor plan implementation, not due to lack of knowledge on how to stem the spread. The graph then goes on to demonstrate that the blue states were more effective at implementing (or continuing) their COVID plans (recognizing KB's comment that the coastal liberal big cities were the petri dishes where Lessons Were Learned early on, so didn't see infection spikes later), while the red states ignored best practices and demonstrated successful tactics around the world, and infections spiked. Yes, it is a political piece. But I do believe they were transparent with their goals and motives, and demonstrated their hypothesis with well-sourced data.
Coming up with explanations is easy. Weighing evidence and forming sound conclusions is the hard part. When coastal, high-density cities with lots of international travelers were infected first, how much weight do you put on the fact that they tend to vote Democratic to explain the spread?
Exhibit A to defend my initial point.
A reaction gif of a twenty-year-old semi-literate screed on tobacco legislation could just as well support the conclusion that politicians, not Republicans, are unscientific. The clumsy choice of wording (in a paragraph that conflicted with itself) cited statistics that were reasonably accurate at the time. Pence maintained that a third of smokers died of smoking-related illnesses, a figure that appeared to come from a 1987 study. Data demonstrating the percentage of smokers who contract lung cancer were mixed, but some indicated the number was roughly ten to 15 percent.
Yeah... it's real compelling when you look at "most cases" but pretty much falls apart when you look at "least cases." Here's all the tribal land in Arizona: Meanwhile, "least covid" is absolutely dominated by Hawaii 'cuz they can pretty much lock down.
This is like the Rorschach Test of political affiliation. That's Mitch McConnell going "bitch I installed three supreme court justices, over a hundred lower court justices and prevented the Obama administration from accomplishing a single fucking thing for four years." If you accept the fundamental basis that a conservative judicial revolution is the end goal, then Mitch McConnell is the Lebron James of Republican Senators and here's some wannabe fighter pilot saying "you can't dunk."
And I get all of that, absolutely, but the tw33t3r video was probably the most dead-eyed, mechanical smile and monotone laugh that I've ever seen/heard in my life. Probably all politicians are some degree of sociopath. Sorry, that's just the way the world works. But this was like watching a remarkably out-of-practice sociopath, a person in a position of power beyond reproach who has abandoned their ability to even sympathize, much less empathize.
The site appears to be down. Here's the Google cached copy.
Thanks. This is what Twain was talking about when he said, "Lies, damn lies, and statistics," or whatever the exact quote was. I'm no way defending the practices of leaders who didn't urge caution, but if Pfizer showed us their vaccine data, and they said "all the people treated after Sept 15 were protected from the virus," we would (rightly) throw a fit. If there is no a priori reason to subdivide a dataset, then there is no reason to subdivide a dataset. It's that simple. I could get on my high horse about this all day (it's one of the big issues plaguing science), but I won't. I'll simply say that post-hoc analyses are almost all bullshit. Forgetting science for a minute and just focusing on the human, I also have a problem with this type of red/blue dividing of people. It presupposes that (1) all the people of a given state are of a similar political persuasion; (2) people of that political persuasion don't deserve sympathy from the other side; and (3) the mistakes of leaders mean that everyone deserves the suffering (collective punishment). I wonder what the analysis would come out as if, say, all the Native Americans were excluded. Certainly the virus isn't their fault, but they live primarily in "red" states and have suffered the highest infection rates of any demographic, as far as I've read. God I hate Twitter.