How do NYs numbers compare to states other states, notably the southern ones that resisted lockdowns?
What I'm getting at is that, if you want to use New York as a test comparison for loose vs tight restrictions, you're going to have a much deeper analysis to do, and a large portion of the deaths in New York were effectively resulting from a period when there were zero to minimal restrictions.
Anyway, it's problematic because around half of the total recorded deaths for New York state, for the entire pandemic up to now, likely resulted from infections that happened during the no/minimal restrictions period in March of 2020. Presumably the original poster wanted a "strong restrictions" vs "light restrictions" comparison w.r.t. to deaths. And that's fine; it's just that New York is going to give you a poor starting point for that comparison unless you dive deeper.
NY and the even-worse-faring NJ are denser and therefore likelier to have higher total infection numbers and deaths than the Plains states. So I wouldn't even accuse them of mismanagement except that this nursing home strategy seems to have been a bad one. However I think the story here is how the media chose their favorite son in this (Cuomo) despite him actually being one of the worst performers. And the TV-news-watching public dutifully ate it up despite clearly contrary data being available on the web from Day 1.
New York was also the first hit in the world and most medical treatment/handling wasnt really understood when NY got hit with the brunt of the virus in March 2020.
My grandfather, along with many of the other patients, died in one of these places from COVID in Massachusetts last May.
He was in a physical rehab following heart surgery to fix damage from a botched pacemaker installation. The family spent most of January -> March getting the equipment and reworking his house so he could be cared for at home, but he caught COVID before it was ready. He was in critical condition for 2 months until he finally passed. The real kick in the gut that he was considered "COVID free" for the last two weeks but the damage to his lungs was too great.
My grandmother was able to be with him when he died, holding his hand in a hazmat suit...
I don't think I've ever read an HN post that made me cry like that.
These two factors are key, in my opinion. Infection rates and deaths fell dramatically in the NE after a better understanding of how to treat COVID was gained, after mitigations for spread were implemented, and after the spring. Those rates also stayed relatively low for the remainder of the pandemic compared to other states, as well.
Cases per capita: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109004/coronavirus-covi...
Attribution to lockdown or not is insufficient to determine these numbers. Mask adherence, population size, and climate are also important.
Top 10 deaths per capita are dominated by New England and Southern states
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...