Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
A new study has found that states with GOP governors or a majority-Republican electorate have lagged behind their Democratic counterparts in instituting social distancing policies amid the coronavirus pandemic. Those delays are “likely to produce significant ongoing harm to public health,” the researchers warned.
The study, “Pandemic Politics: Timing State-Level Social Distancing Responses to COVID-19” — by political science professors and a health metrics researcher from the University of Washington — found that red states or states with Republican governors instituted social distancing policies an average of nearly three days later than blue states did.
“Our findings are unambiguous: political variables are the strongest predictor of the early adoption of social distancing policies,” the study stated. “All else equal, states with Republican governors and Republican electorates delayed each social distancing measure by an average of 2.70 days ... a far larger effect than any other factor, including state income per capita, the percentage of neighboring states with mandates, or even confirmed cases in each state.”
While the gap may initially appear to be small, the difference could translate into a significant number of human lives with a disease that can spread explosively in a single day. The researchers noted the different outcomes in American cities during the 1918 influenza pandemic depending on how they responded: Stricter social distancing policies resulted in a fraction of the lives lost compared to places where policies were looser.
Link to the study
Comments
Data from temperature monitoring company Kinsa Health suggests that social distancing is effective
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/health/coronavirus-restrictions-fevers.html
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/31/2020 - 8:46am