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Comment by benjaminwootton | Hacker News Reader

Haven’t they been open for most of the year?

I know people would love to see them fail, but the fact the wave randomly hits them now shows the lack of correlation with restrictions and masks, no?

Wasn’t California topping the charts at points this year?

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I have lived in Florida for 49 years. There is nothing random about our situation. This was predictable and expected.

See https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/ and https://mcculley.github.io/VisualizingObservedDeaths/Florida...

This tells you that a lot of what could be gotten away with before won't fly with Delta spreading.

Also only the last 2-3 months have required being indoors in most of Texas and Florida.

> Also only the last 2-3 months have required being indoors in most of Texas and Florida.

And that's when cases exploded in Florida and Texas [0], from 1-2k per day to 15-20k, coinciding with the spread of delta throughout the world.

If delta hit in a different season it might have been the northern states who fared worse than the southern states.

[0] https://www.statnews.com/feature/coronavirus/covid-19-tracke...

Probably true. Vaccination rates have an effect here too, and that varies quite a bit state to state.

Nobody wants to see their strategy fail, what annoys people is that we know that even when you do most things right, COVID can infiltrate a home or care facility where masks can't be worn all day and that's when things get dangerous.

Where tiny COVID hotspots start is basically a matter of luck. A few people acting like idiots is enough to start a local cluster. It's what happens after those local clusters pop up that dictates the real results.

Masks are part of the equation, the real frustrating is the lack of vaccination and the lack of masking. Massachusetts has a population of 7 million people, had 2 deaths yesterday and has ~500 people currently hospitalized with COVID. Louisiana, a similar sized state, has a population of 5 million and has nearly 5k people in the hospital and has a 7 day rolling average of 110 deaths. Texas and Florida are both worse than Louisiana. This includes the fact that Cape Cod had a massive 1000+ person outbreak July 4th which resulted in, as far as I'm aware, no deaths and relatively few hospitalizations.

Tell me what state you'd rather live in?

The whole "But but California was worse at one point schtick isn't going to work when you see Southern states with double as many people per capita dying as the Northern state who've had most of their deaths occur very early in the pandemic when we didn't have treatments or even effective testing.

I'm not sure you can just casually tack on "and the lack of masking". Massachusetts does NOT have a mask mandate and Louisiana DOES - for everyone regardless of vaccination. [1] Mass. has a 1+ vaccination rate of ~75% whereas Louisiana has a rate of ~48%.[2] We can talk about actual mask compliance all day but I'm putting my money on vaccines being the life saver here.

[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-are-t...

[2] https://covidactnow.org/?s=22131139

It's not mask mandates that matter. It's mask wearing.

Exactly what I meant by "mask compliance". It's tough to measure and can only be done through self-reporting.

Respirator wearing is the only thing that works. Masks not at all for aerosol size particles.

Some percentage of particles are going get stuck in the mask fibers, thereby lowering the viral dose you get. There is no way it doesn’t help at least some, the question might just be how much.

Masks can't be sealed and all the studies that say they are somewhat effective use mannequins with perfect seals. Real world data from Florida shows schools with and without mandates had the same rates of infection which mirrored the general communities.

Stephen Petty, one of the top industrial hygienist in the world does an excellent job of covering all aspects of this: https://rumble.com/c/PettyPodcasts

> Masks can't be sealed and all the studies that say they are somewhat effective use mannequins with perfect seals.

That's not true. Here is a lit review that shows you multiple avenues of evidence that show masks are effective: http://files.fast.ai/papers/masks_lit_review.pdf

> Real world data from Florida shows schools with and without mandates had the same rates of infection which mirrored the general communities.

Again, mask wearing is effective. Mask mandates may not be. There is a difference, and the difference is compliance. If people don't actually wear masks, that's not evidence that masks don't work.

http://files.fast.ai/papers/masks_lit_review.pdf

The new strains seem to be no more lethal, but more contagious, possibly so contagious they may be able to spread in a population that is fully vaccinated and which is practicing social distancing. People who are vaccinated are unlikely to get sick so vaccination is overwhelmingly the most relevant public health intervention at this point in places where it's already endemic.

I would personally rather be living in Texas or Florida, but my point is that all of these league tables change on a month by month basis with a limited correlation with restrictions. In a few months a different part of America will be struggling.

Vaccination rates yes maybe we can now start pointing fingers as they undoubtedly keep people out of hospital, but Texas and Florida have been unfairly criticised all year.

What happens is that people get in the hospital for reason xyz and get tested positive as prt of admission protocols.

In my county in west-central NY, all the hospitalized vaccinated people were going to the hospital for some other reason and tested positive at admission. They count as "hospitalized with COVID" even though they are not in the hospital for COVID.

Yes that's very common. Patients are admitted to the hospital for some other condition and then test positive for coronavirus.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/26/exclusive-half-c...

Not since mid-February.

Here's how bad it actually is in Florida, BTW: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/05/watch-how-floridas-sh...

Notice how the case numbers explode when they drop all restrictions.

You're not understanding how this line of argument works. When blue states that do all the restrictions have big surges in hospitalizations, you're supposed to just say, "well it would have been even worse if they hadn't done that" or blame other factors like population density. When it happens in red states, you blame the lack of restrictions even if there is no temporal relationship whatsoever between when they were lifted and the surge in cases.

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