What sorting algorithm is that?


Interesting. An animated graph COVID-19 cases in the top 25 states, color-coded by party affiliation. Watch the chart gradually bleed red.

Diseases should not afflict people on the basis of who they voted for, but there they are.

Comments

  1. kome says

    I’d be curious to know the breakdown of who the virus is infecting on the basis of their political affiliations, but I don’t know how well we can infer that information from that chart. Lots of Democrats and unaffiliated-but-not-conservative people live in all of those states, just not enough to keep the state from having Republican leadership or a history of voting for Republicans in the presidential elections. Given how the pandemic response has been abysmal for poor people and communities of color, it wouldn’t surprise me if a surprisingly substantial chunk of those infections were people who are very opposed to Republican leadership.
    State-level information is too coarse. I wonder if there’s something equivalent for county-level infection rates? It might be slightly more defensible to make such inferences from that level of granularity.

  2. blf says

    Note that the link @1 (thanks!) also shows the data from other perspectives, including cases or deaths (normalised per million) “…by vaccination”. Florida, as one might expect, “leads” in both at the present time.

  3. pilgham says

    The red states are being hurt both by the actions of the state governments and by the behavior of the people who voted for them in the first place. It’s stupid squared.

  4. HappyHead says

    And you just KNOW that if presented with that chart, die-hard Qpublicans will insist that the presence of three “blue” states on the final chart is proof positive that Democrat policies are completely ineffective at dealing with the pandemic, and are worse than just shooting everyone in the streets.

  5. birgerjohansson says

    HappyHead @ 6
    Yes, the presence of that giant, crowded state Rhode Island proves that Democrat-run states are just as bad as the Republican-run states.
    -Note that Rhode Island quickly receded at the end leaving the top of the chart to the traitor states.
    (seriously, Rhode Island, what the hell? I know you have the Griffin family fucking up sanitation and health, but if you lock up Peter it will solve 99% of the problems)

  6. PaulBC says

    It’s been frustrating for me to watch California, because often it will seem to be doing very well and then suddenly reverse course. It’s a big state, and the pandemic story is different in different regions. Also, even at its worst it was around median. The current trend looks good though. Or “good” considering that with universal vaccination we’d all have the pandemic in our rear-view by now.

    However, perception of California nationally is harmed by the fact that large numbers of people have no comprehension of how to divide by population size.

  7. brucej says

    one, those are cases, not cases per 100k residents, so high pop states will dominate.

    And the key here isn’t that “republicans” are getting the disease, it’s that “republican-run” ones are.

    Living in a Republican-run state IS hazardous to your health, whether you’re a Democrat or Republican.

    (side note: a judge in AZ declared a whole bunch of laws the Lege passed at the last minute to be unconstitutional. This included banning mask mandates in schools, vaccine mandates, rules for requiring vaccination status, and teaching American history (aka CRT), because they all failed the Single Purpose clause of the AZ state constitution; that laws passed as part of a package must all have a single purpose, and none of these have anything to do with the State budget, which is the package they were stuck in. )

  8. brucej says

    One edit, I misread the chart is IS population/adjusted, as cases per million. I blame old eyes and small type :-)

  9. blf says

    bruce@9, those are cases, not cases per 100k residents, so high pop states will dominate.

    (1) No, it’s “Total cases per million” (second line in the graphic).
    (2) If high pop states … dominate, then why is California (the most populous state) so low as-of now(-ish), below N.Dakota, Nevada, Utah, etc.?

    I concur living in a thug-run state is typically very dangerous, but as, e.g., The Red / Blue Divide in COVID-19 Vaccination Rates (September 14th) shows, at the county-level (note to kome@2), hair furor-voting counties have a consistently worse vaccination rate than Biden-voting counties. And the gap is growing.

    Vaccination rates tend to correlate with cases, and perhaps especially serious cases, so whilst I don’t have such county-level case / death data at-hand (but recall the John Hopkins tracker does), I speculate there will be a very similar trend: Consistently more cases / deaths in hair furor-voting counties than in Biden-voting counties, and, presumably, a growing gap.

    As an aside, I have no idea if there is such data as House representative district-level, which is perhaps an even better political-tendency indicator than county?

  10. blf says

    brucej@10, obviously, my @11 overlaps… thanks for the self-correction! (And my apologies for accidentally shortening your handle in @10.)

  11. says

    That’s only for the last four months. I’d like to see how it started and changed since March 2020, when Kushner and the other criminals saw it hit democratic states and decided to do nothing. They thought the disease would stay put; instead, it went where it spread well (anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers) and waned where people acted appropriately.

  12. blf says

    @13, See the link @1 (first comment!), there are multiple graphics, all(?) starting in June 2020 (over a year ago), with the choice of start date explained at the site.

  13. Tethys says

    The linked video in the OP starts June 1st,2020, and runs to the present week. He smooths the raw data and it is weighted for population.

    Watching Florida race to the top in multiple analyses was unexpectedly dramatic. I also wonder what was going on in Rhode Island, before it fell to just above the national average. Better reporting?

    In every analysis that is given at the link in comment #1, the “dirty South” is winning at dying on their hill. The tragedy is that it’s entirely preventable at this point, and the virus kills without regard to political allegiance.

  14. blf says

    (A crosspost from poopyhead’s current Infinite [Pandemic and Political Madness] Thread…)

    Perhaps not a surprise, Unvaccinated Americans Blame Everyone But Themselves — Children, Vaccines And Not Wearing Masks — For Covid Surge, Poll Finds:

    While most Americans blame vaccine holdouts for surging coronavirus cases, rationed medicines and overwhelmed hospitals, few unvaccinated people feel any responsibility, according to new polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, underscoring the tough barriers officials must overcome as they seemingly hold anyone and anything other than themselves responsible for the dire outbreak.

    […]

    Just 12% of unvaccinated adults believe people refusing the vaccine is a major factor behind the high case numbers, the poll found, with the majority (58%) thinking the surge is driven by vaccines being less effective at preventing the spread of Covid-19 than scientists initially thought.

    Unvaccinated people even cited vaccine holdouts last among all reasons driving the high case numbers polled by Kaiser, including children who aren’t eligible for vaccination (15%), governments lifting restrictions too soon (27%), the infectiousness of the delta variant (35%), people not taking enough precautions (37%) and immigrants and tourists bringing Covid-19 into the country (40%).

    […]

    Just 11% of vaccinated people thought breakthrough cases indicate the vaccines aren’t working, Kaiser found, and 19% thought the same of booster shots.

    […] Consistently, Republicans have been less likely to accept the vaccine and more likely to question the public health measures put in place to end the pandemic. This latest Kaiser poll is no different: Republicans (32%) were the least likely to cite people refusing the vaccine as a major reason for high cases when compared to Democrats (87%) and Independents (54%) and the most likely to blame immigrants and tourists bringing Covid-19 into the country (55% of Republicans versus 21% of Democrats and 34% of Independents).

    Despite 77% of vaccinated people holding the unvaccinated responsible for the rise in cases, just over half (51%) said they were angry with them. Unsurprisingly, only 3% of the unvaccinated said they were angry with people who hadn’t gotten a Covid-19 vaccine. […]

    […] The vast majority of hospitalizations and nearly all deaths from Covid-19 are in unvaccinated people, who have cost the healthcare system at least $5.7 billion in the last three months alone. The huge surge in demand for what few medicines are licensed to treat Covid-19 in the US has triggered nationwide shortages and rationing of scarce supplies, with some areas prioritizing scarce supplies for unvaccinated patients.

  15. says

    So basically stupid has turned contagious. I want to say “just let them die”, but I can’t. Not only because it hurts everybody, but I don’t want that for anybody if I can prevent it. But can we? If they value freedom above all, then who are we to “save” them from themselves?

  16. birgerjohansson says

    So the pandemic is kept alive by selfish assholes who refuse to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
    This means the core idiots will only change their conduct when forced, like when France required vaccine “passports” for many activities.
    In France, this lead to loud protests but people complied (obviously France has no big political party that is invested in sabotaging the pandemic response).

  17. blf says

    @18, As far as I currently know, the nazis (e.g., Le Pen and her mob) are the only French “political party” to be anti-Health Pass (which is different from anti-vax, etc.), albeit they are not the only political grouping so opposed… so are the loonytarians and a rather confused “far left” — plus some of the anti-Macron “yellow vest” rioters and various politicians (a small minority, as far as I know, albeit sometimes-loud). The so-called protests (mostly against the Health Pass, but also included anti-vaxxers) were a nothing by French standards — very loud, yes, but not big (by French standards) — and have been declining for weeks; in fact, I’m unsure if there even were any protests last weekend, either here in the village or elsewhere.

    The Health Pass (paper or app) proves you’ve been either fully-vaccinated, have recently recovered from Covid-19 (and so are presumed immune), or have very recently had a negative test. Starting 15th October, so-called “convenience testing” will no longer be free, which hopefully cause another uptick in vaccination rates. (There are provisions for medically-advisable tests, those who cannot be vaccinated, etc.) Sometime soon-ish (don’t quite recall when this kicks in (end of this month?)), the minimum age for having a Health Pass will drop from 16(?) to 12, now that 12+ year-olds have been able to get vaccinated for several months.

  18. brucegee1962 says

    One of the things that concerns me most these days is how often “alternative facts” seem to be moving into the mainstream. I’ve often heard people claiming that the evidence that the vaccines don’t work is that the majority of people in ICUs are vaccinated. This, obviously, is 100% opposite from the truth. Now we have Trump saying “the Arizona audit shows that I won the state.”
    This isn’t cherry picking evidence, or even fabricating — it’s straight up calling up down and day night, and people are going along with that because of tribalism.

  19. nomadiq says

    This is the ‘race to the bottom (top)’ algorithm. Gradient of decent is performed by having some elements penalized due to ignorance while other elements are rewarded for effort and compassion. It is inefficient but does perform a sort.

  20. birgerjohansson says

    OT
    Moar bad news.
    I mean really bad news.
    Carrington events – geomagnetic storms powerful enough to fry all electronics and send us to the mid-19th century- do not represent the worst the sun has to offer in terms of coronal mass ejections.
    Miyaki events -named after the discoverer and 10- 100 times stronger than a mere Carrington event- have been found in the isotope record 775 AD, 5258 BC and 7176 BC. The Carrington event 1859 was not even strong enough to leave an isotope signature.
    And more undiscovered Miyaki events may be hiding in the isotope record, as we have not been looking for them.
    .
    I remind you that the Soviet Union nuclear forces had a ‘dead hand’ system; if the communication systems broke down the local commanders were supposed to launch.
    Imagine the consequences of a Miyaki event.
    So a nuclear submarine that notices the airwaves are full of static but no messages might decide to launch (the electronics of a nuclear submarine may be protected by the water)

  21. John Morales says

    birgerjohansson, Miyake, not Miyaki.

    And, if it’s bad enough to fry all electronics and undersea cables and stuff, it’s also gonna fry a submarine’s electronics. And a missile’s electronics, for that matter.

  22. Kagehi says

    Not sure if I should just shrug and say, “Yep, that’s California for you…”, or shake my head in incomprehension, as it started near the top middle of the pack, and freaking stayed in the dead middle, the whole freaking time, right up until literally days from the end of the video…

  23. Rob Grigjanis says

    birgerjohansson @23:

    So a nuclear submarine that notices the airwaves are full of static but no messages might decide to launch (the electronics of a nuclear submarine may be protected by the water)

    I thought one of the fail-safes was that they couldn’t launch until they receive a signal containing the launch codes. No signal, no launch.

  24. Chelydra says

    It’s so informative to watch Michigan start out near the top and drop off the chart in ten days, never to appear in the top 25 again.