Comparing COVID Deaths Across States

A new dashboard

I continue to see/hear people make comparisons among US states around COVID deaths that fall under the category of “lying with statistics”. This is almost always in the interest of making a political point & also almost always suffers from a case of Simpson’s Paradox.

Here’s one for a few months back from Andy “have your kids sleep in the garage” Slavitt:

Let’s make this the golden rule of COVID comparisons….

IF THE DATA DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR AGE IN ANY WAY, IGNORE IT!

Some of you may have heard that Florida is a popular spot for senior citizens. Also, older people seem to die at higher rates of COVID than younger people. Hope I’m not being too controversial. So, lets perhaps break down this down by age group:

Can you see how much better California has performed than Florida? What, you can’t? For those trying to make a Blue States are so much smarter than Red States point, my advice is to use Texas instead of Florida:

California does seem to have performed better across age groups than Texas, so let’s go with that! Of course, just make sure you don’t have some jackass friend that points out the inconvenient comparison of California to Utah (Trump +21):

Hmm. Maybe, just maybe, there are many factors in play that affect how many people died from COVID in a given region…. age, general health, geography, etc., etc.

In any case, I’ve created a new dashboard to allow folks to explore any comparisons they would like to make: COVID Deaths by Age and US State.

Sources:

COVID Deaths: CDC

Population: US Census