What happened to Florida?

 About a month ago, I had a post inspired by a NY Times story on the Covid epidemic in Florida.  At that time, Florida had the highest hospitalization and death rates of any state, by a large margin.  It occurred to me that I hadn't heard anything about the situation in Florida lately, so I decided to look at contemporary data.  

Here is the relationship between vaccination and hospitalization rates as of late August (the post didn't appear until September 3, but the data were from a few days before that):

 

Here is the relationship as of late September:

 

 

 Florida is still above its predicted value, but it's no longer an extreme outlier.   The highest hospitalization rate is now in West Virginia, which was 14th a month ago, so things have changed a lot over the last month.  

Here is the change in hospitalization rates between August and September by vaccination rates (in August):

Florida had the biggest change (a decline), but all of the other states with large changes were ones with low vaccination rates.  Conversely, most of the states with low vaccination rates had large changes--some increased and some declined.  This makes sense, since Covid is an infectious disease and a lower vaccination rate means more people at high risk of catching it.  Neither the August or September rates (or the change) had any discernible relationship to the masking and other restrictions in place in late August.  

Finally, I regressed changes in vaccination rates* on hospitalization rates in late August and several political variables:  Biden's share of the vote, a dummy variable for states with a Democratic governor, and a set of dummy variables for various levels of restrictions.  Although the restrictions mostly involved masks and social distancing rather than incentives to get vaccinated, my idea was that people might take them as a signal of how big a problem Covid was.  Higher hospitalization rates were associated with more vaccinations during the next few weeks, but there was no evidence that any of the political variables made a difference.  In a sense, it's encouraging that people are responding to actual conditions despite the effect of politics in getting us to where we are today.** 

Here is the relationship between hospitalization rates in late August and new vaccinations over the next few weeks. 

Two states stand out--Arizona had a high rate of new vaccinations, and West Virginia was very low, but even leaving them aside there was a good deal of variation. Given the clear importance of vaccination rates and the lack of evidence that anything else matters now, I think there should be more attention to understanding differences in the pace of new vaccinations.

*I used vaccination rates as of September 13, since it takes a couple of weeks for vaccinations to have full effect.

**I tried an interaction between Biden vote and hospitalization rates.  The estimate was large enough to be of interest, suggesting that the effect of hospitalization rates was about 50% larger in a state which had 60% for Biden than a state which had 40% for Biden, but the t-ratio was only 1.1.  That is, it's not to say much of anything about the possibility of an interaction given these data. 

It's all relative

 A new paper in the American Sociological Review concludes that "higher education liberalizes moral concerns for most students, but it also departs from the standard liberal profile by promoting moral absolutism rather than relativism."  The first part is expected, but the second is not--as the authors (Miloš Broćić and Andrew Miles) note, many people have said that higher education promotes "moral relativism."  Their interpretation is that the effect of higher education has changed, possibly because of increased ideological homogeneity among faculty and administrators, which "could create a sense of moral consensus that leaves shared liberal beliefs unchallenged or might even make them seem naturally true."  

Their measure of absolutism vs. relativism is agreement or disagreement with the statement:  "some people say that morals are relative, that there are no definite rights and wrongs for everybody." In their sample (people aged 23-29 in 2012-13), about 48% of people who didn't attend college, 39% of people with some college, and 35% of college graduates agreed.  I couldn't find this question in any previous survey, but I did find some others that could be regarded as measures of the same general concept:

A.   "There are clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong [or] whether something is right or wrong often depends on the situation."  (PRRI 2018)

B.  "There are some things that are just wrong regardless of the situation [or] what is wrong or right depends on the situation" (PRRI 2011)

C.  "There are some things that are just wrong regardless of the situation [or] what is right or wrong almost always depends on the situation" (PRRI 2011)

D.  Agree or disagree that "There are clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong" (Pew 2007)

E.  "Some people say that there are absolutely clear guidelines of what is good and evil, others say that there can never be absolutely clear guidelines of what is good and evil."  

The percentages taking the "absolutist" position (clear and absolute standards or some things just wrong)  on each of these questions, by education:

                                            A             B           C          D           E

HS only                            43%         54%      40%     84%      65%

Some college                    38%         52%      46%     81%      62%

College grad                     36%         54%       49%    72%      50%

On three of them, more educated people were less likely to take the "absolutist" position; on one, they were more likely, and on one there was no difference.  So it seems that a lot depends on exactly what question you ask.  I think the major reasons for that are that most people have not thought much about the general question, that virtually everyone believes both "absolutist" and "relativist" positions to some extent, and that there is such a large number or things that can be regarded as matters of right and wrong (not just political issues, but things involving relations with family, friends, neighbors, etc.).   Since the relationship to education differs among the questions, and none of these have been repeated over a span of more than a few years, it's not possible to say anything about changes in "relativism" or in its relation to education.*  

Andrew Sullivan tweeted about this paper, commenting "the fanaticism and absolutism of 'education'." But the position that  Broćić and Miles label "absolutism" is not equivalent to political absolutism:  for example, what if someone believes that there is a universal human right to free speech?  That seems to imply disagreement with the proposition that "morals are relative."

Of course, people often say foolish things on Twitter, but this one is noteworthy because it's an example of a larger tendency.  Over the last 50 years (or maybe more), parties of the left have gained among college graduates and lost ground among other voters.  People on the left have generally been distressed by this change, and have tried to explain it.  The explanations usually involve some failure by the left--either it hasn't offered policies that improve the lives of the working class, or hasn't shown enough empathy, or at least hasn't been good at messaging.  On the right, the change has been welcomed:  people boast about how the Republicans are now the "Party of the Working Class."   There are few attempts to address the question of why they've lost ground among highly educated people, and those few tend to be like Sullivan's:  just expressions of anger and contempt, rather than attempts at understanding.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

 

 

*Early versions of the World Values Survey offered a choice between "clear guidelines" that "always apply to everyone, regardless of the circumstances" and "depends entirely on the circumstances at the time", but that seemed to stop in 1995. 

Disturbing the twitterverse, part 2

 Was there a backlash against Muslims after September 11?  There have been a number of polls asking if people have very favorable, somewhat (or mostly) favorable, somewhat/mostly unfavorable, or very unfavorable opinions of Muslims, dating back to the late 90s.  I computed a summary measure counting very favorable as +2, somewhat favorable as +1, somewhat unfavorable as -1, and very unfavorable ass -2 (people who said they didn't know or couldn't rate them were counted as zero).  Some surveys just asked about "Muslims," others about "American Muslims," or "Muslim Americans."  I thought that might make a difference, so I distinguish the forms in this figure:

Opinions became more favorable after 9/11--in fact, the rating from November 2001 is the highest ever, although that may be partly due to the "Muslim American" wording.  Over the long term, opinions may have become more favorable, and certainly haven't become less favorable.  There's one survey from August 2010 that is an outlier, showing more negative opinions.  That may be because it was prefaced with a statement saying that they were going to ask about some religions--that might have led respondents to think about doctrine rather than people.  But regardless of how you interpret that survey, there's no evidence of a general backlash.  

Of course, I'm not denying that harassment of Muslims increased after 9/11--people with negative views became more motivated to act on them.  Some security measures that were adopted with popular support may have also had disproportionate negative effects on Muslims.  But in terms of general public opinion, there was not a rise in anti-Muslim feelings after September 11, or the years after.  That's the paradox of Trump's success--it came in a time when prejudice had declined and was continuing to decline.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]