The South's economy outperformed the rest of the country during the pandemic thanks to more aggressive reopenings. The Wall Street Journal reported the news yesterday. However, the good news came at somewhat of a price as the region suffered higher rates of infection during the summer although it did not match those in the Northeast. The Journal reported:
When coronavirus cases began surging across the South this summer, the region seemed destined for the same economic setback the Northeast suffered during the spring.
But by the end of summer, the South’s economy remained largely unscathed from the wave of infections. Its unemployment rate had fallen to 6.9%, the lowest of any region in August.
The number of people employed was 6% lower in August than in February, before most of the country locked down, compared with declines of 10.6% in the Northeast, 8.2% in the West and 7% in the Midwest. Consumers continued to spend at relatively high rates.
Many economists say the pace of economic recovery depends on the path of the virus. The South’s economic resilience shows the relationship is more complicated, at least in the short term.
The South is diverse with 16 states, including Texas, Florida, Virginia and Oklahoma, and not all shared the same pattern. Nonetheless, as a whole it owes its stronger economic trajectory since the initial shutdown not to success in containing the virus but to its relatively aggressive reopening of business and a greater willingness by consumers to venture out despite risks.
“In the South, I think that the more pro-business policies that Southern governors have largely followed for decades allowed much more flexibility earlier,” said Mark Vitner, a Charlotte, N.C.-based economist at Wells Fargo Securities. “We did see a rise in Covid infections over the summer. That slowed the pace of reopenings, but it didn’t reverse it.”
Public-health experts say the South’s early reopening came at a price: higher rates of virus infections and deaths starting over the summer, illustrating a trade-off between the economy and health.
New Covid-19 cases surged in many Southern states during the summer, several months after spiking in New York and other Northeastern states. Cumulative per capita case counts since the beginning of the pandemic are higher in the South than any other region, though some of that may be due to more widespread testing than was possible in the Northeast during the pandemic’s early wave.
Deaths have also been relatively high in some Southern states, especially Louisiana and Mississippi. Overall, the region has reported about 60 deaths per 100,000 people, higher than the Midwest at 52 and the West at 40 but much lower than 132 in the Northeast.
Early on, the pandemic hit the elderly and nursing homes in New York and New Jersey especially hard, which may help explain the Northeast’s high death rate. Outbreaks in the summer among Southern states, by contrast, were more concentrated among young people....
“Every night back then was sleepless,” Mr. Kemp recalled in an interview. “There were people telling me I was an idiot. I was the dumbest governor in America.”
But Mr. Kemp also received calls and emails from people praising his decision, he said. Many business owners told him they had to open up or face bankruptcy, he said. State officials also said Georgia’s relatively early reopening meant tax revenue didn’t decline as much as they anticipated....
As the virus ravaged the South this summer, restaurants and bars were ordered to operate at reduced capacity or close temporarily in some localities.
Nonetheless, its restaurants were more likely to remain open than elsewhere in the country. About 85% were taking reservations at the end of September, compared with 82% in the Midwest, 77% in the Northeast and 73% in the West, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of OpenTable data....
Credit- and debit-card data from Affinity Solutions Inc. suggests that spending by residents in Southern states didn’t fall as dramatically as the national average during the initial economic shutdown. By September, their spending was about 0.6% higher than in February, while it was down 2.5% nationwide.... Rest of article.
17 comments:
That's the thing people can't seem to grasp. Reopening the economy doesn't have to be an on-off switch between full lockdown and everything goes.
Appropriate mitigation measures can make it safe enough to keep most businesses going. However, some of the risky activities like bars, nightclubs, sporting events, concerts, weddings, funerals, indoor church, etc. can be restricted to minimize the risk of events where a dozen or more people are infected at once.
I hope we learned something from this pandemic we can apply to preparations for the next one. Identify the nonessential activities and have a plan to shut them down. Full lockdowns don't work, but Mississippi definitely failed miserably in its approach of "reopen everything" without regard to risk vs. necessity.
I'm sure the "Interim" MDA "director" can make some political hay with this.
Good article. Some economists are saying we are in a "K" shaped recovery instead of a "V" or a "W" shaped recovery, as first predicted. In other words, some will improve while others will not.
I'm sure per-capita never entered into it....
@9:13
Blah blah TL;DR
The Right, the President, and Rush Limbaugh are once again absolutely vindicated and the leftist chicken little cowards are absolutely BTFO!
Part of the problem in Mississippi, well, in fact, everywhere, is binary thinking. The LiberaLtarians bleat that any common sense measure is "tyranny," and the Democrats screech that everything should be locked down completely. Never had to be that way.
But the single greatest failure is masks being politicized. Orange Face didn't want to smudge his makeup or muss his hair, so he fought tooth and nail against them. Stupid. Biden played masks as PC Gospel.
He could have ramped up N95 mask production with the Defense Production Act. He could have had every yahoo with a cloth Trump 2020 mask. Could have mailed masks to every house. Could have mailed ballots to every senior, his base. All of which would have helped public health AND his campaign.
Yet, the Tards on both sides have now minimized masks and vaccines. And undermined science. Stupid people on Facebook and podcasts spewing crap.
So, yeah. Internet crap companies rule over the masked and unmasked Sheep.
@10:47, Rush Limbaugh is literally dying because he is unable to accept scientific fact. Donald Trump is supposed to be the most secure person in the nation and yet caught the “fake flu” because of his own stupidity and arrogance. These people are losers who should be a lesson to us all.
@11:59
Rush is on the radio right now on AM620 WJDX. He is hardly dying. He takes about 1 week off a month for his cancer treatment.
Trump literally proved that Covid-19 is a nothing burger unless you already have 1 foot in the grave. He is old and fat and never required intubation.
Mississippians have largely been drawn into the Wall St denomination of Bull worshipers. It would seem that whatever Rupert Murdoch's Libertarian priests say Mississippi and the 'old south' will immediately take it as gospel and trash any contradictory thinking as blasphemy. The new GOP (Libertarian Party)sand bags itself behind the old fiscally conservative Republican Party hiding their extremist goals from the public.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/4/10/1291095/-Astounding-Charles-Koch-s-1980-VP-Run-Kill-Medicare-Soc-Sec-Min-Wage-Public-Ed
The Dow and Nasdaq are poor indicators of this country's wealth for middle and lower income families who make up the majority of the population. Damned few in Mississippi benefit from the Libertarian Party's goals.
@1:16, Rush just announced his cancer is terminal, it is a matter of time. He still doesn’t acknowledge that smoking causes cancer because his ego is greater than his compassion. Trump was airlifted to the hospital and had a slew of experimental medications given to him to save his sorry life. He still downplays the seriousness because his ego is also larger than his compassion for Americans. They both celebrate ignorance and the country is worse because of them. It’s unfortunate this is who the right worships.
I still can't understand why they are waiting until Thursday to reopen the State Fair.
Why didn't Cowboy Andy reopen it yesterday ?
@2:09
The power of the blood of Jesus can make Rush Limbaugh whole. He has more people praying for him than you can imagine. Rush is a national treasure.
@10:52 We don't resist mask mandates because Trump. I've never read or heard any source use him as a source against masks. We're not living in Orwell's 1984 just yet so we can remember when this started that the majority of the medical community including Pope Fauci and the Surgeon General were saying not to wear masks. We can look back at studies done on masks before anything Trump supports becomes stupid and evil. We can look at the data outside of MS and see that locations with high mask compliance did not on average do better than others.
@3:00, if it makes you feel any better, there’s a good chance the whole thing is a publicity stunt.
I'm certain you meant to drop a few smiley faces in that post 3:00.
"Trump literally proved that Covid-19 is a nothing burger unless you already have 1 foot in the grave. He is old and fat and never required intubation."
- October 20, 2020 at 1:16 PM
Well that's just bullsh!t. The only thing Trump proved once again that privilege ensures access. In this case, access to experimental, bleeding edge tech and medicines that 99% of us would never be treated with. Otherwise his fat, old orange butt would be taking a dirt nap with Hermain Cain right now. Adding insult to injury, his miracle treatment wasn't hydroxychloroquine, but a drug called REGN-COV2 that was developed using a decades-old cell line derived from embryonic kidney tissues obtained from an aborted human fetus.
Massive car crash on I-55: reason for death . . . covid related.
Gunshot to the head on Capitol Street: reason for death . . . covid related.
101 year old cancer patient dies at VA Hospital: reason for death . . . MAY be covid related.
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