South Dakota is home to 3 of the 5 counties with the highest percent of cigarette smokers. We’ve written about one of those counties, Oglala Lakota County, severaltimes before as it has the lowest life expectancy of any county in the US (residents die at 67 on average), and median income is $30,347. Meanwhile, Utah is home to 6 of the 10 counties with the lowest percent of cigarette smokers. American Inequality has coveredseveral of these counties before. For example, Summit County has the highest life expectancy of any county in the US (residents die at 87 on average), and median income is 2.5x higher than in Oglala.
Cigarette smoking is 50% higher than in the following 12 states compared to the rest of the nation: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia. An average smoker in these 12 states goes through about 53 packs in one year, compared with an average of 29 packs in the rest of the US. Life expectancy is 3 years lower in these states compared to the national average.
In 1998, California became the first state to implement a smoke free law prohibiting smoking in all indoor areas of bars and restaurants, as well as in most indoor workplaces. As we can see from the map above, California now has one of the lowest percent of adults smoking in the country.
If an area sees a high number of migrants, along with a strong birth rate and low death rate, then its population is bound to increase over time. On the flip side, if more people are leaving the area than coming in, and the region’s birth rate is low, then its population will likely decline.
Which areas in the United States are seeing the most growth, and which places are seeing their populations dwindle?
This map, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, shows a decade of population movement across U.S. counties, painting a detailed picture of U.S. population growth between 2010 and 2020.
Author(s): Nick Routley Article/Editing: Carmen Ang
Another way of looking at this is to look at the Year over Year change of rates within each group. As you can see from the chart below, the percentage change remains pretty consistent among each individual grouping, with 2020 seeing the largest change rate, and 2021 seeing a small but significant change rate from 2020 (meaning overall mortality was still quite elevated relative to 2019).
In summary, when we take a historical view and higher level view while maintaining these same groupings, these stark differences in Covid-19 mortality rates do not seem to translate into overall morality rates. Why?
At the risk of this analysis turning into another pile-on pointing out the New York Time’s errors, I’d like to offer a more benign explanation. It’s one that has plagued journalists and reports throughout the pandemic. Why is it that everything is framed in Red and Blue? One simple reason: the availability of the data. Leonhardt is using data that is easily accessible and is already formatted for easy analysis.
This is what is called an availability bias. It’s essentially creating a hypothesis or completing a study based on a specific set of data, purely for no other reason than that the data is there. Just because the data is available does not mean it’s the best data to use to try to answer a question.
Almost half (47%) of U.S. counties or equivalents gained population between 2010 and 2020 (Figure 1).
Five counties (metro areas in parentheses) gained at least 300,000 people during that period: Harris County, Texas (Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land); Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler); King County, Washington (Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue); Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise); and Tarrant County, Texas (Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington).
California’s Los Angeles County remained the largest county in 2020, crossing the 10.0 million-person mark between 2010 and 2020.
Author(s): PAUL MACKUN, JOSHUA COMENETZ, AND LINDSAY SPELL
At least 3,878 new coronavirus deaths and 105,515 new cases were reported in the United States on Feb. 11. Over the past week, there has been an average of 101,655 cases per day, a decrease of 36 percent from the average two weeks earlier. As of Friday morning, more than 27,433,900 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus according to a New York Times database.
Author(s): Jordan Allen, Sarah Almukhtar, Aliza Aufrichtig, Anne Barnard, Matthew Bloch, Sarah Cahalan, Weiyi Cai, Julia Calderone, Keith Collins, Matthew Conlen, Lindsey Cook, Gabriel Gianordoli, Amy Harmon, Rich Harris, Adeel Hassan, Jon Huang, Danya Issawi, Danielle Ivory, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Alex Lemonides, Eleanor Lutz, Allison McCann, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Jugal K. Patel, Alison Saldanha, Kirk Semple, Julie Walton Shaver, Anjali Singhvi, Charlie Smart, Mitch Smith, Albert Sun, Derek Watkins, Timothy Williams, Jin Wu and Karen Yourish. · Reporting was contributed by Jeff Arnold, Ian Austen, Mike Baker, Brillian Bao, Ellen Barry, Samone Blair, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Aurelien Breeden, Elisha Brown, Emma Bubola, Maddie Burakoff, Alyssa Burr, Christopher Calabrese, Zak Cassel, Robert Chiarito, Izzy Colón, Matt Craig, Yves De Jesus, Brendon Derr, Brandon Dupré, Melissa Eddy, John Eligon, Timmy Facciola, Bianca Fortis, Matt Furber, Robert Gebeloff, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Matthew Goldstein, Grace Gorenflo, Rebecca Griesbach, Benjamin Guggenheim, Barbara Harvey, Lauryn Higgins, Josh Holder, Jake Holland, Jon Huang, Anna Joyce, John Keefe, Ann Hinga Klein, Jacob LaGesse, Alex Lim, Alex Matthews, Patricia Mazzei, Jesse McKinley, Miles McKinley, K.B. Mensah, Sarah Mervosh, Jacob Meschke, Lauren Messman, Andrea Michelson, Jaylynn Moffat-Mowatt, Steven Moity, Paul Moon, Derek M. Norman, Anahad O’Connor, Ashlyn O’Hara, Azi Paybarah, Elian Peltier, Sean Plambeck, Laney Pope, Elisabetta Povoledo, Cierra S. Queen, Savannah Redl, Scott Reinhard, Thomas Rivas, Frances Robles, Natasha Rodriguez, Jess Ruderman, Kai Schultz, Alex Schwartz, Emily Schwing, Libby Seline, Sarena Snider, Brandon Thorp, Alex Traub, Maura Turcotte, Tracey Tully, Lisa Waananen Jones, Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Jeremy White, Kristine White, Bonnie G. Wong, Tiffany Wong, Sameer Yasir and John Yoon. · Data acquisition and additional work contributed by Will Houp, Andrew Chavez, Michael Strickland, Tiff Fehr, Miles Watkins, Josh Williams, Shelly Seroussi, Rumsey Taylor, Nina Pavlich, Carmen Cincotti, Ben Smithgall, Andrew Fischer, Rachel Shorey, Blacki Migliozzi, Alastair Coote, Jaymin Patel, John-Michael Murphy, Isaac White, Steven Speicher, Hugh Mandeville, Robin Berjon, Thu Trinh, Carolyn Price, James G. Robinson, Phil Wells, Yanxing Yang, Michael Beswetherick, Michael Robles, Nikhil Baradwaj, Ariana Giorgi, Bella Virgilio, Dylan Momplaisir, Avery Dews, Bea Malsky and Ilana Marcus
[MPC here: I am not tagging all these people. Sorry, y’all]
