Finally, he came to Florida, “the poster boy for keeping shit open…they’re down at 17. So, New York and New Jersey did worse than Florida.” Even though Florida “basically stayed open,” Maher argued, “they didn’t do a hell of a lot worse, and maybe did better.”

All of this was to imply that mitigation efforts had failed. He was flat out wrong, misled by having chosen the wrong data, and ignoring the right data. Including data from the first wave, which caught everyone by surprise, is misleading, if mitigation is what is on trial.

In fact, after the first wave, Florida and other states that did little to stop Covid-19 fared much worse than New York, New Jersey and other places that maintained mitigation strategies for longer.

What’s more, a highly conspicuous pattern emerged. Through the lens of excess mortality, since July 1, 2020, the 20 states with the most excess mortality per 100,000 people are (starting with the most): Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nevada, Missouri, Florida, Montana, Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, and South Dakota.