Political Irony

A post in Axios provides some evidence that the Republican approach to fighting the coronavirus is not working like they said it would. And their new push to reopen businesses and recreation is likely to backfire.

So far, the states that have suffered the most due to COVID-19 are states with Democratic governors. This was to be expected, because blue states have larger, more densely crowded populations. Also, blue states have done significantly more testing (per capita), so it is likely that the number of cases in red states is under-reported. I also have to wonder what effect the rerouting of medical supplies from blue states by the feds has had.

Regardless, that didn’t stop Republican politicians and pundits from making political hay, calling federal aid to state and local governments “Blue State Bailouts“.

Ironically, the states with GOP governors are now seeing a surge in new cases:

Over the last two weeks, reported infections have increased 91% in red states versus 63% in blue states.

We see the same pattern for COVID-19 deaths: 170% growth in red states vs. 104% in blue states.

That means that deaths in red states are growing 63% faster than in blue states. Due to the nature of exponential growth, at that growth rate red states will pass blue states in deaths per capita at the end of May (in less than 4 weeks). And that is not even taking into account that states will likely see increasing death rates starting a week or two after they relax distancing rules.

According to FiveThirtyEight, “Nine of the 10 states that have seen the most rapid increase in coronavirus from Monday to Thursday are states that voted for Trump in 2016.”

Will this cause Republican pols and pundits to change their tune? Don’t hold your breath.

UPDATE: The CDC announced today that they expect the daily death rate to double by June, and predict the total American deaths will be around 135,000. Ouch! That’s like a 9/11 event every single day.

Both Trump administration predictions and a public model from the University of Washington (that has been frequently cited by the White House) say that deaths will rise as states reopen.