What aren't you getting?

As was said before, at the beginning, before COVID was known how to treat Illinois - primarily the Chicago region, got hit hard and Arkansas didn't. Thousands of people died here in the Chicago area before it was known how to treat. Arkansas didn't get hit hard at first because to be blunt, who goes there? Some small town in the middle of Arkansas, which is the majority of the state, it is much more of a convoluted path for COVID to arrive then a city like Chicago. Your major city Little Rock is small and sparsely populated at 1600 people a square mile while much maligned suburban sprawl Schaumburg Illinois is 3700 people a square mile, then throw in Chicago.

True, you DON'T want to be Arkansas.

They're within 1% of Illinois in per capita death rate in total, but Arkansas' deaths are more recent on average. It was doing well (or got lucky) through summer, but they lost control.

Illinois has gotten their numbers much lower lately, with a far better trend.

Here's a point that must be obvious: If you have few infections to start with, the same policy/behavior might result in a similar trajectory but from a lower point, so the numbers will be lower. Even then, Arkansas screwed it up.

Not as badly as Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama, or the Dakotas mind you, as those might be the worst in per capita deaths post-May, but not far off of those.

Illinois was one of the first states to mandate a strict lockdown. What are you not getting?

A strict lockdown saves lives, its the only way to stop Corona! Why didn't their strict lockdown work well?

Or maybe I just don’t want to spend a cold and rainy (or snowy) winter locked down in my London flat when I don’t have to?

The fact that so many in the UK (at least the media) are looking to Australia as an example to follow makes me question whether I ever want to go back for more than packing up my stuff.

And yes, the situation in the UK is largely a product of the poor state of the NHS and nursing homes. The reason that elderly people with Covid needed to be discharged to care homes is that “bed-blocking” is a longstanding problem in hospitals, and with the bed shortage exacerbated by Covid, they had to go somewhere. When they get to the care homes, of course, they are often older and smaller facilities that lack the physical ability to separate and isolate infected patients.

Btw, the free walk-up testing down here is really excellent. Once registered you get an email with a bar code, and you can just turn up and get a free PCR or rapid test whenever you want between 9am and 5pm.

The strict lockdown was after it was too late. Just because you lockdown doesn't mean that the current cases stop and people's infections go away and they are able to treat COVID. Masks were hard to come by at this time and essential businesses were still open. I am not advocating either way for a lockdown or not.

And just because, now, you see where you live in your part of Chicago you see a lot of mask wearing doesn't mean that mask wearing is adhered to in other parts of the city.

I spent all of December in Miami and I don't regret it one single bit. Flew biz class with points, got tested every single week, limited my social interactions, wore masks, but fuck...it was like going back to normal life again. City streets, restaurants, businesses, etc., seemed so much more vibrant and I didn't see any of the blight (boarded up store fronts, restaurants out of business, encampments) that is plaguing CA cities. It did wonders for my mental health. All the while they are somehow faring far better in terms of covid deaths and rates.

I'm pretty bitter how they're allowed to have a sense of normalcy and get on with life, whereas here in CA, we're basically living in the dark ages. Grateful outdoor dining is allowed now, but life seems far more depressing here.

It did work. On June 30, 2020, Florida had less than half the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths that Illinois did (Florida: 3,505 - Illinois: 7,124). As of February 11, 2021, Florida has registered over 6,000 more deaths than Illinois (Florida: 28,384 - Illinois: 21,985).

Put another way, since June 30, almost 25,000 people died in Florida of COVID, while only about 15,000 died of COVID in Illinois. And Florida's numbers might even be drastically undercounting the actual COVID casualties.

Good for you. Meanwhile LA's massive working class population is dying at an alarming rate and nobody is even picking up the damn bodies.

And it *is* absolutely tragic and I feel for that subset of the population. That said, if you had the resources to stay for free with a friend who lives in Miami for 5 weeks, could do it as safely as possible (worked remotely, didn't fly coach, got tested regularly, wore masks everywhere but when swimming, hung out with the same 4 people including my boyfriend the whole time, didn't party), I'm sure most people would've chosen the same. It was safer than me staying in my cramped apartment in central LA and being surrounded by covid everywhere. I cannot control the reality of LA's inherent socioeconomic disparities. I realize this is taboo to state, and I 100% acknowledge I was privileged to be able to get away. I'm just being honest about it, unlike many people who are being hypocritical.

Pretty much the same story here, minus being there for 5 weeks. I drove down for NYE just to get away, and the energy was completely different. Maybe it helped that the weather was amazing and you can go to the beach, be outside, etc. Flying back down for a week tomorrow to escape Hoth.....

I've been all over this city and in the burbs over the last three months, people are wearing masks.

So even with Illinois being so serious about covid and Florida not, Florida still did better or about the same as Illinois considering they have nearly double the population of Illinois.

Your numbers prove Florida is doing good.

If that's what you want to take away from it, I'm not going to change your mind.

No, I understand your point- basically Florida got lucky at first but then got worse as Illinois learned things and then started to improve, right?

My point is that Illinois is still doing worse than Florida since June.

I keep reading about these strict lockdowns in other blue states and I see them as counter-productive. Delaware has been a solid blue state for 20-25 years, but our Governor is pragmatic and knows that if you go too far with locking things down, people will resist even more. Being sensible and even-handed has worked here. We are no worse off than the other blue states that surround us, like Pennsylvania and Maryland among others. But we have been more open than other Northeast states, and people comply with the easier orders more readily. Once we came out of the lockdown in May, there was no closing back up. The closest that we got to another lockdown was a last call for bars and restaurants at 10 PM around the holidays. Now we are seemingly moving towards a permanent reopening, with 50% capacity for restaurants, churches, youth sports, schools, and so on. Allowing things to stay open at 30% capacity or more has made it easier to get people to follow the main rule in place to wear masks. I see masks on about 95% of people in restaurants, gyms, stores, and so on. People are allowed to live their lives. It doesn't sound like we're as open as Florida or Texas, but it isn't too far off. It is a far cry from places like Pennsylvania, where the backlash to state orders has been strong even in Democratic areas.

I could go on and on about how I think our Democratic governor has handled things well, with meaningful input from Republicans, for a cohesive and bipartisan effort to keep deaths and cases down, while also letting businesses stay open. There's been no instances of arbitrary measures here, like in other places where churches have 10% capacity but restaurants have 30% capacity, or where schools are closed despite negligible cases of kids passing the coronavirus to adults, or so on. I feel bad for people that live in these states with strong lockdowns, where businesses are slowly losing their grip and drowning, and relatively not many fewer people are dying for their forced sacrifices.

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Day 1 of a snap 5 day lockdown for all of Victoria, not just Melbourne. UK variant got out of hotel quarantine and there are 14 cases associated with the cluster so far - all close contacts of workers or recent residences in quarantine.

Brisbane did this last month, Perth earlier this month and now us - the common denominator is the UK strain and how it appears to spread faster.