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Why Florida Doesn’t Look as Deadly as New York

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I was wrong about Covid-19 deaths. But not as wrong as I wish I was.
A few weeks ago, I made a prediction that I in no way wanted to be correct: By early August, the Covid-19 death toll in Florida would average 600 a day, rivaling the worst days of the pandemic in New York. I was wrong. As of August 4, Florida’s seven-day average was just 184, according to the latest official data. Unfortunately, I don’t see this as reason for relief. Here’s where I might have erred: I made some ambitious assumptions about how New York’s experience could be applied to Florida. Specifically, I assumed a straightforward relationship between the percentage of Covid-19 tests coming out positive and the actual number of cases: The higher the percentage, the more cases are going unrecorded because people with mild or no symptoms aren’t getting tested. The relevant positive rate for New York was more than double Florida’s (44% versus 18%), so I estimated that New York’s mid-April peak of 11,434 cases would be about 24,000 in Florida terms. It followed that if New York ended up with 1000 deaths a day, Florida — with about 15,000 cases — should see more than 600.

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