Frankenscript
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- Dec 21, 2017
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Pretty crappy article, on the whole. The headline should be "Sustained Lockdowns Are Saving Californians"
Do the math. California, a state of almost 40 million people, is 7-day-rolling-averaging just over 200 deaths per day (and rising).
Indiana, a state that has been mostly open for the last couple months, is a state of about 6.5 million people and has an averaging about 80 deaths per day (and rising, but we've been increasing for months)
California has six times as many people as Indiana... so multiply our red-state status quo by 6, and you would get 480 deaths per day, or more than twice the per capita daily death rate as California.
Or look at our country as a whole: 332 M people, 2580 deaths per day recently (and rising) Subtract out California's 40 M / 200 deaths and the "Rest of US" has 292M people with 2380 deaths per day is nearly TWICE the COVID-19 death rate of California. Cali is about 1 death per day per 200,000 and the rest of US is about 1 death per day per 122,689 people.
Keep in mind, these are PROXIMAL death rates... based on rolling averages of the last week. Not historical numbers clouded by ups and downs.
But if you wanted to compare historical deaths per million: USA as a whole (including California): 970. California alone: 568.
I haven't bothered to do the math to get deaths per million for "Rest of US without California" but it would be a bit over 1000. The damned virus has killed on in every thousand of us. In California, about half of that.
So again: "Sustained Lockdowns Are Saving Californians"
And to the point about ICU space: it's not necessarily that easy to create it. It also has to be staffed. California did very well up to now holding the death rate down, saving tens of thousands of lives; they haven't needed the expanded capacity until recently and are likely in the process of setting it up and figuring out how to staff it.
