Data Point: Both Death and Unemployment Rates Higher In Lockdown States - Granite Grok

Data Point: Both Death and Unemployment Rates Higher In Lockdown States

Graph Data Data point

“Nine of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates are led by Republicans. The exception is Wisconsin whose Supreme Court last May invalidated Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s lockdown.”

The unemployment rate in Wisconsin is 3.9%—the same as Indiana—compared to 7.1% in Illinois whose Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been slow to reopen.

Unemployment by States - highest and lowest

Of course, blue-state governors who imposed long and stringent shutdowns would say that they did so for reasons of public health. Harsh shutdowns, they may argue, were necessary to slow the spread of the Wuhan virus.

But there is no evidence of any such positive effect. This has been shown over and over in a variety of ways, but let’s add one more. I added up the coronavirus deaths per 100,000 of population, according to the CDC, for the ten states in the Journal’s chart with the highest unemployment rates, and averaged them.

I found that the ten states with highest unemployment averaged 202.6 deaths per 100,000. I then did the same thing for the ten states (all but Wisconsin with Republican governors) with the lowest unemployment. Their average deaths per 100,000 was much lower, at 134.5.

(H/T: Powerline)

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