It's Got To Be Bad When The New York Times Admits This

Why have Republican leaders (say, governors of Texas, Florida, and Georgia) get savaged in the press, while Democratic leaders (say, the governors of California, Washington, Illinois, and New York) are sainted?  The actual coronavirus results (you know, data, or science) don't justify either response:

The staggering American death toll from the coronavirus, now approaching 100,000, has touched every part of the country, but the losses have been especially acute along its coasts, in its major cities, across the industrial Midwest, and in New York City.

The devastation, in other words, has been disproportionately felt in blue America, which helps explain why people on opposing sides of a partisan divide that has intensified in the past two decades are thinking about the virus differently. It is not just that Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to reopen businesses, schools and the country as a whole. Beyond perception, beyond ideology, there are starkly different realities for red and blue America right now.

Democrats are far more likely to live in counties where the virus has ravaged the community, while Republicans are more likely to live in counties that have been relatively unscathed by the illness, though they are paying an economic price. Counties won by President Trump in 2016 have reported just 27 percent of the virus infections and 21 percent of the deaths — even though 45 percent of Americans live in these communities, a New York Times analysis has found.

Here's why I like federalism, and why I'm glad the country did not have a nationwide shutdown plan:

Texas, solidly Republican territory and the second most populous state in the nation, had one of the country’s hottest economies before the outbreak. The state’s biggest cities have so far escaped the worst of the damage. More than 200 metro areas in the United States have higher infection rates than both Dallas and Houston, which may explain why Texas residents are particularly frustrated by the shutdown.

“The cure is worse than the disease, no doubt,” said Mark Henry, a Republican who oversees the Galveston County government in southeast Texas. “There are businesses that were shut down that are never going to open again.”

Yep.

I live in a suburban city of about 90,000 residents that has had 8 coronavirus deaths as of today.  Sacramento County has had 56 deaths out of a population of almost 1 1/2 million.  data source I'm just not overly worried about dying from this virus--and I don't even live in a nursing home.  The data tell me that, as Mr. Henry said above, "The cure is worse than the disease, no doubt".