Study: NY & Calif Fall Short in Handling Pandemic; Florida Gets an “A”

By:  Dale Wolfe

A recent study gave Florida a grade of “A” and New York and California both received “F’s” regarding handling of COVID

The study was based on educational outcomes, covid deaths rates and the economy.

To determine the “educational standards”, the study used the number of days missed by students, and a look at remote learning,  The economic standard that was used was the unemployment rates, and state GDP

The per capita death rate from Covid-19 in New York is 350 and for Florida it is 342. If you take out New York City, NY had almost the same rate as Florida   The study concludes what many have been saying all along, the lockdowns  hurt Americans more than they helped by crushing jobs and educations without saving lives

Stephen Moore is co-author of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity’s Final Report Card on State Responses to Covid-19, and he explained  in an article written for the Daily Mail:

We ranked each state on three metrics: the economy (unemployment and economic output in the state), education (days of schools missed by children), and mortality (Covid death rate adjusted for age).

We assigned letter grades to the states based on their Combined Score performance, based on the three metrics. The full results are published at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

First, there were some geographical trends.

The states on the far West Coast and the Northeastern states tended to have worse outcomes.

The Mountain states and the Southern states tended to have adopted more effective strategies, though there many exceptions.

One outlier is Hawaii – the island state – that was able to most effectively isolate its population by restricting travel to the state and thus keeping infection rates low.

Second, there were trends that reflected the political leanings of the state governments.

Moore concluded: Our comprehensive Covid Performance Index of the 50 states and Washington DC analyzed the results of government policies across the country to determine what worked and what didn’t.

Our bottom-line conclusion: The strictest economic and societal lockdowns did not save lives, but they did have severe consequences.

In 2020, the U.S. economy declined by more than in any year in 75 years.

Tens of millions of jobs were lost in 2020 and even today total employment is about two million below the pre-Covid peak in January 2020.

And our children suffered. Missed school days and poor-quality remote learning have caused significant learning loss for entire generations of students with long-lasting personal and societal costs.