COVID-19 will end which governor's career?

[Skill and Chance]

I think Lt. Gov Dan Patrick might be in serious trouble in 2022, given his positions are even worse than Abbott’s.

This.  I think he's a sure loser in a Trump midterm and more likely to lose than win in a Biden midterm.  Assuming the worst has truly passed in Texas, Abbott comes out of this looking pretty decent as the 1st governor of a solid R state to put out a statewide mask mandate.  Also, the death rate in Texas is lower than Florida and way lower than the NE states that got hit in March.  He's already getting a primary challenges from an anti-mask nut.  As long as he doesn't lose the primary, he could go into the general looking like a moderate on the issue (mask mandate but no lockdown).
     

[Skill and Chance]

“Hurr Durr Northeast states have the highest death rate hahaha libruhls!”

Seriously, are we ignoring the fact they were hit significantly earlier when treatment and hospital preparations were not at all what they were even after just a few months and before we knew a lot about the virus. We didn’t even have f**king proning as a standardized practice for f**ks sake!
We were still praying for just an effective TREATMENT, not a vaccine but a f**king way to keep gramps from choking to death on his own mucus.


Bergamo got hit hard in March, that doesn’t mean they “failed”, when they did the best they could with the knowledge available.

I could also bring up population density, higher public transportation usage, time of year, etc but why even bother? You morons want to defend your narrative so badly.

Attacking Cuomo for his nursing home massacre is its own thing, but to claim “Muh authoritarian measures” don’t work because of some awful apples to oranges comparisons you made after two minutes tops of research? Pathetic.

“The data has been clear...” WHAT F**KING DATA, MR SCIENTIST?

Did you or a reputable Institute conduct an experimental study of two populations with all major controls standardized (or accounted for) and only change one variable (either a mask mandate or a “lockdown”?

Or did you take two numbers from two demographically different populations in two different areas with different environments, densities, normal behaviors etc and cherry-pick until you could find the perfect narrative-backer?

By the way, masks had to be proven effective with the rigorous standards above, so the fact you are trying to delegitimize them with your s**t excuse of “evidence” is truly laughable.

This is probably directed at me but I'm not sure.

Here's my "two minutes tops" of research that scratches the surface.



As you can see, vast majority of Americans started wearing masks over the summer but didn't prevent the winter spike in cases and deaths. And comparing non-mandated states to mandated states, there is little difference.

This if from the CDC:



Essentially, lifting mask mandates and indoor dinning restrictions resulted in less than 2% increase in case and death rates for masks, and 3% or less increase for case and death rates for indoor dining.

Now here's the questions we should be asking: Is the benefit we get from lockdowns and much less so mask mandates (which I don't mind too much) worth the suffering of our kids and young adults mentally? Self-harm among our kids is up 333%. As many as 3 million kids have gone without schooling (and to the larger point kids are struggling more academically with worse grades). Large amounts of small businesses are permanently closed. Is all that worth it? That's where the conversation should be.  That doesn't even touch the moral argument which the left has already decided against, which is the idea of it even being immoral for the government to declare someone's business closed or stop people from practicing their religion, etc.?

Btw I'm not against wearing masks at all. I wear one in public all the time. I think people should. And I'm not arguing that masks aren't effective at mitigating spread. But when people are screaming about Texas and Mississippi murdering their own citizens because they lifted their mask mandate (something many states never did) and opening to 100% capacity for businesses, it needs clarification. People still wear masks, many people weren't anyway, and for vast majority people this doesn't change their daily behavior. But you wouldn't think so with the reaction it provoked. Also, Connecticut and other blue states have lifted capacity restrictions as cases are plummeting too. Is that also negligible homicide? Do we have to wait until literally everybody has the vaccine to lift anything otherwise its murder?

Notice I didn't do any of that without screaming or character assassination?

On the one hand, no state managed to pull a New Zealand and avoid an outbreak entirely.  On the other hand, vaccination of the high risk population is almost complete and to date only ~1/3rd of the US population has been infected with COVID.  In all likelihood, that would be at least 2/3rds and quite possibly >90% of the population if we just continued living normal life.  Assuming the same fatality rate, that's 500K-1M lives saved by social distancing!  And in practice, the 1/3rd of Americans who did get COVID were disproportionately low risk young people everywhere outside of the NE, so that's probably a low estimate.

I agree the data on non-medical masks have been disappointing compared to what looked possible by comparison to Asian countries last spring.  With a concerted effort, it should have been possible to get a pack of N95 masks, which indisputably work to every household prior to the fall COVID wave.  Not one state did that, and it was a huge missed opportunity.