23 March 2020

Coronavirus in blue states and in red states

It has been interesting to me to note how the epicenters of the coronavirus epidemic have centered on what have traditionally been "blue states" (Washington, New York, California), for epidemiologic rather than political reasons.  Some have argued that the response (or non-response) of American politicians has been in part governed by that distribution.

Today an article at Bloomberg discusses Las Vegas and Orlando as targets for the economic devastation that the virus will bring - for obvious economic reasons.
The Great Coronavirus Shutdown of 2020 is hammering lots of industries, but leisure and hospitality is probably the hardest hit. This is a big deal because (until a week or so ago, at least), restaurants, bars, hotels, casinos, theaters, museums, gyms, sports teams and the rest employed 16.9 million people, or 11% of the U.S. nonfarm payroll workforce, up from 9% in 2000 and 7.4% in 1980. That’s more than manufacturing, construction and even health care (albeit just barely on that last one, and probably not for long).
They then present a national map showing the dependence of each state on leisure and travel industry:


Red states dominate the distribution.  Here's a county-by-county breakdown:


It will be interesting to see how the economic and political response to this pandemic plays out.

6 comments:

  1. All your links go to the Wikipedia article on red and blue states.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I live just outside of Las Vegas.
    Seeing all the casinos shut down is... amazing.
    It's directly affected several people I know, and is rippling outward. Some of the big resorts put their people on paid leave, others just layed them off.

    All the gun stores sold out a couple weeks ago.

    ReplyDelete
  3. the industries that will be making money: medical equipment, cable and internet providers, internet equipment manufacturers (servers, routers, etc.), toilet paper and paper towels, hand sanitizer, shoes (people walking off cabin fever), canned and dry foods, tv programs in re-runs and syndication, peanut butter... is it time to start buying them stocks now?

    I-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. All this data is affected by the rate of testing. We are not testing they way we should be.

    I knew we were in big trouble as soon as they did not test every passenger on the princess cruise.

    ReplyDelete

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