California mandated masks. Florida opened its restaurants. Did any of it matter? | Hacker News Reader

California mandated masks. Florida opened its restaurants. Did any of it matter?

vox.com

17 pointslxm14 comments

This article paints a misleading picture of Florida's COVID procedure when you consider Florida's largest county.

Florida's largest county (Miami-Dade) was very much on lockdown all through the summer of 2020. All restaurants were closed for seating, only takeout was allowed until well past summer. Masks were mandated and required everywhere even outdoors, enforced by fines of at least $100 for each instance of being caught without a mask even outdoors since mid 2020 until very recently in 2021. Masks are still required in most indoor businesses. Even Miami-Dade County public schools didn't allow my child (and more than half of all students) to return to school in person for the entire school year, which ended today, still remotely.

One could argue that doing things on a county/city basis made way more sense, though. Most states locked down way too early, and in my state (Minnesota) it was especially ridiculous to lock down the rural areas at the time when we only had a few confirmed cases in the entire state and summer was close.

I hope if we see this again in our lifetimes governors will be more levelheaded.

My biggest takeaway from the pandemic: social science is way harder than biological science.

Of course it mattered: Florida likely had fewer suicides due to businesses being forced to shut down.

https://abc7news.com/carmel-pizza-company-aj-sanchez-coronav...

The toll of California's lockdown was massive and it has nothing to show for it.

In 2020 California had around 4500 suicides and in 2019 Florida had around 3500 suicides. Florida experienced a 10% drop in suicides for 2020 and had around 35,000 Covid deaths. California had around 62,000 Covid deaths. If you are going to argue against the efficacy of lockdowns then your focus ought not be about number of suicides. Do you have a more relevant argument?

This has been a big talking point on HN since all this started, but the data we have so far shows that suicide rates did not increase.

https://www.hopkinsguides.com/hopkins/view/Johns_Hopkins_Psy...

Suicide isn’t something that necessarily occurs right after the events in question. After you destabilize someone’s business/career/income it can take a long time for the ripple effects(ex: divorce due to money trouble, the addiction you acquired to cope finally getting out of hand, …) to play out and for someone who’s been enduring a bad situation to eventually succumb to despair. We’ve also deliberately delayed, but not prevented many of the ill effects, for example with the eviction moratorium. It may not be long before all those people with back rent and back electric bills are out on the street. In my estimation we won’t know the effect of this pandemic on suicide rates for a few more years.

The linked guide mentions this. The fact remains: there is no evidence, currently, to suggest increased suicide, and specifically in regards to "lockdowns". You could argue it's the coming months, and "recovery", that make or break this, not the response when the virus was actively raging.

I was going to say yes...but on a population basis, CA has just under 2x the population of FL...and only a little bit under 2x the COVID-related fatality rate of FL (assuming fatality rates are accurate). IOW: very similar per capita death rates accounting for significant digits.

OTOH, the article makes it seem like an either/or. Many places in CA also reopened its restaurants last summer for indoor dining before closing them again, and restaurants have been open for dining for months in CA.

The big difference between the two states is the aftermath of COVID: CA's economy has recovered faster than any other states' economy, while FL is facing an impending crisis due to the complete loss of the cruise-related tourism industry (which represents more than 7% of its GDP, including both wages and spending by tourists).

I guess the decrease of tourism and cruise business would've happened whatever Florida did.

DeSantis has definitely made things worse by playing chicken with the cruise lines over vaccines.

No, it wouldn't have. I have friends who had a trip planned to Florida, but changed to Arizona when they saw how bad the outbreak was in Florida.

I'm sure they're not the only one.

Ah, yes, 2 out of 2 would've gone to Florida if they were stricter, this mean there would have not been any decrease to Florida tourism at all. /s

Sorry, no matter how good Florida could've handled it, tourism would've decreased anyway. Unless they invented a pill that was guaranteed to cure you of it.

While cruises are an important aspect of Florida's tourism economy, they were going to be impacted regardless of the state's policies.

FL's economy hasn't missed a beat.

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