Those states all had nearly half of their cumulative deaths to date by summer 2020. In Rhode Island, that number is 35% before July 1, 2020. That was pre-vaccine and primarily due to the original surge when there was no social distancing. To blame Raimondo for that first wave is silly, and I would say the same thing if it were a Republican in charge. She was dealt a tough hand with the initial outbreak in the northeast and has done a pretty good job since then. If you want to see a list of states that have done particularly well on COVID through good management, I give you Washington (D, Jay Inslee), Vermont (R, Phil Scott), New Hampshire (R, Chris Sununu), Oregon (D, Kate Brown), Virginia (D, Ralph Northam), Maine (D, Janet Mills), Ohio (R, Mike DeWine), and Maryland (R, Larry Hogan). It doesn't have to be partisan.

If you want to talk about cases per capita then you should also talk about tests per capita, where no state in the country has tested more than Rhode Island (5.2 reported tests per person). Florida is at 1.9 reported tests per person. Like Trump said, places that test more have more cases. In this case, testing is a good thing though, because it helps slow the spread by getting people into quarantine sooner. It's allowed Rhode Island to minimize deaths as much as possible after the first wave through social distancing, quarantining, masking, and ultimately vaccinations.

Meanwhile, Florida has had more than 90% of their deaths after July 1, 2020 and almost 50% after vaccines were available. This is when we knew how to slow the spread of COVID, had better hospital care to treat it, and eventually had a vaccine to protect people. As a point of reference, when vaccines became available to everyone (call it April 1), Florida had a per capita death rate of ~1600 per million population. That was better than the national average at the time. Rhode Island had a per capita death rate of 2483 per million. Now Florida's per capita rate is 2687 and Rhode Island's is 2700. The national average is 2249. We've wound up with Rhode Island and Florida having basically the same per capita death rates and Florida likely to take the lead for good this week when they release updated death counts on Monday and Thursday.

So if you wanted to know why the media covers DeSantis more, there's a statistical reason why, since Florida has caught up to Rhode Island despite that state having a massive lead due largely to the first wave. Of course, you could also point to all of the actions that DeSantis has taken that were explicitly designed to promote his version of freedom (banning school districts from instituting mask rules, banning private companies from requiring vaccines, etc) at the expense of public health. Those were designed to generate media attention and political support from his base since he wants to run for President in 3 years. If you wanted media attention, you got it!

[Post edited by CMUHoo at 10/18/2021 08:00AM]