Covid: the only thing that made any difference was vaccines. All the other lockdown stuff, masks, distancing, didn’t help

Florida was lambasted during Covid, for "being so lax". In the end
Florida performed better than California.
Florida deaths: 313/100k. California 418/100k

From a new study in the Lancet, based on the 50 US States. This is the best comparison, because they are all on one continent, all keep good records, and all have a Federal government oversight of their health systems. 

The conclusion: the only thing that really helped keep Covid deaths per 100,000 down was the rate of vaccination. The other measures didn’t help. Whether or not you locked down; closed or didn’t close schools; closed or kept open the beaches; let bars and restaurants open or forced them to close. The whole lot of all that stuff, all those Non Pharmaceutical Interventions, didn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. The data are in. 

I suggest only looking the death rates and not the infection rates. Because deaths are carefully registered whereas infection rates depend on how much you test. You could have two places with the same infection rate; one tests a lot and finds a lot of infections, one doesn’t test a lot and finds few infections. Deaths per 100,000 are a more reliable measure of how well your pandemic policies worked. 

On that measure, the only thing that had an unequivocal effect was vaccination rates. All the rest: closing bars, closing restaurants, closing schools, stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, social distancing mandates, the whole panoply of what became known as NPI -- non-pharmaceutical interventions -- had zero to little effect. Yet they had massive negative effects on livelihoods; on the economy; on mental health; on kids’ education levels. 

And those effects were worst for the least privileged. The laptop class simply didn’t care for the working class. 

“Laptop class”: This needs to be a much more widely talked about category. Those who live with and by their laptop, who can be anywhere, live anywhere, make their living anywhere and don’t suffer if they are told to stay at home. Indeed, who love to stay at home. And be waited on by the gig-economy people. To be Ubered everywhere, to be Amazoned for books and other junk, who are Deliveroo’d each day their daily bread: but I’m sorry I can’t forgive them their trespasses. For they never cared for them, the untemencsch who serve them. 

Bitter, o bitter, is my feeling to the Laptop Class. 

(Of which, btw, I of course am one. And of which almost all my friends and family are part)