the CDC provides a graphing tool to look at excess deaths by week.

it provides useful perspective.

for reasons i'm not clear on, they split NY state into 2 parts, NY city, and NY state not including NYC.

it does not combine them.

but we can look at both.

state (ex city)

and NY city:

as can be readily seen, both had massive surges in excess deaths around the covid epidemic.

so did lockdown loving new jersey.

now let's look at the states everyone is so busy fretting over right now.

here's florida:

they have, thus far, not even looked as bad as the 2017-18 flu.

their foray into excess deaths was minor.

flat curve.

texas is also well below the levels of the 2017-18 flu.

flat curve.

california is slightly above the 2017-18 flu levels overall, but nothing like NY or NJ. they are about 2% above baseline overall.

arizona ia much the same.

so, these states look nothing like the outcomes of the north east. NJ and NY would, if independent, be the number 1 and 2 worst countries on earth in terms of covid deaths per million population

the 6 states that pushed cov+ patients into nursing homes
are a league of their own

states with 19% of US population were 55% of deaths. that's stagging.

it's really just this one policy that was so much of the ballgame.

same in spain, italy, and quebec.

now, one could argue that this deaths data lags and recent weeks are incomplete so that the data for CA, TX, FL, AZ is going to charge dramatically.

this seems unlikely.

it's just a question of magnitudes

TX had 425 COV deaths in the last 7 days. a typical week in TX has ~4200 deaths. so this is ~10% of deaths even if 100% were novel and based on past age and comorbidity data, that seems unlikely. it might only be 30% novel. maybe 50%. so you wind up 3-5% over baseline.

that looks nothing like the 100% to 300% above baseline figures hit in NY and NYC of the 150% above in NJ.

the current situation in this "sates of concern" is not remotely similar to NY or NJ.

the key to avoiding bad comparisons is good perspective

comparing TX or FL right now to peak NY or NJ is just not in the ballpark

it would take 18 days at current 7 day deaths avg for TX to rack up the deaths per mm of one peak day in NY

it's 94% lower

worth keeping in mind.