Covid-19 California and New York (lockdowns) vs Florida and Texas(no lockdowns)

Introduction

California and Florida pursued very different ways of responding to the COVID-19 crisis. As pointed out by reference (1) "California imposed myriad restrictions that battered the economy, and have left most public school students learning at home for a year. Florida adopted a more laissez-faire approach decried by public health experts — allowing indoor restaurant dining, leaving masks optional and getting children back in classrooms sooner"

An article published March 25, 2021 “UK Lockdown One Year On: It Doesn't Work, It Never Worked, & It Wasn't Supposed To Work” – by Kit Knightly shows the following chart for Florida and California.

The article takes this as evidence that lockdowns do not work. It then goes on to advocate for no lockdowns, no social distancing, no masks etc. and blames such restrictions as being worse than useless and propagated by governments for ulterior motives.

A more balanced article on the impact of lockdowns both pro and con can be found here.

Analysis

We extend the study to also cover New York and Texas, though we focus on California and Florida. The populations and political leanings of the most populated states in the US are below:

We use the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) COVID-19 data at https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19.

As can be seen "For much of the last year, it seemed that California’s response under Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom had led to a dramatically lower COVID-19 death rate. Florida had a cumulative rate as much as 84% higher than California’s last fall. But the winter surge slammed California, and that gap narrowed to 11%."(1). It is seen that overall there is not a dramatic difference in the cases between California and Florida.

However "The shrinking difference in the death rates is likely the product of California’s higher levels of poverty, density, overcrowding and climate that make it particularly susceptible to coronavirus spread, experts say."  ... "And still, California better controlled the virus. If California had Florida’s death rate, roughly 6,000 more Californians would be dead from COVID-19, and tens of thousands of additional patients likely would have landed in already overburdened hospitals. And if Florida had California’s death rate, roughly 3,000 fewer Floridians would be dead from COVID-19." ... "Some public experts are confident that mask wearing and staying home reduce the spread of the coronavirus but acknowledge that California’s strict rules became less effective as exhaustion set in by late 2020." (1). 

On the other hand:  “First, I kind of reject the premise of the California versus Florida comparison,” Whitney R. Robinson, PhD, MSPH, an associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, told Healthline. “[COVID deniers] are cherry-picking a restrictive state that’s done worse than other restrictive states and chosen a permissive state that’s fared better than other permissive states.” 

For example, an alternative cherry-pick gives:

• "North Dakota and South Dakota are both among the least restrictive states in the country with the higher per capita case rates of COVID-19 in the country. North Dakota has had 13,036 cases per 100,000 residents while South Dakota has had 12,585 per 100,000" according to data tracking from the New York Times.
• "Vermont and Hawaii, on the other hand, have some of the lowest per capita case rates in the country (2,341 and 1,912 per 100,000, respectively) and among the most restrictive policies, according to data analysis from WalletHub."

References

(1) "California vs. Florida: Who handled COVID-19 better?" Los Angeles Times, Mar 9, 2021