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San Francisco Stays the Most secure Massive Metropolis Within the U.S. — When Involves COVID Mortality

Despite hysterical headlines about shoplifting and overdosing, San Francisco has suffered hundreds, sometimes thousands, fewer COVID-19 deaths than other major US cities relative to its population.

On any given day, the national news media shifts its angle to expose just how “unsafe” San Francisco is these days. Resident Conservative Dickwad of the New York Post, Rich Lowry, complained of “the city’s reluctance to rule itself,” and oh, I’m sure this isn’t racist dog whistling, saying, “Looters reach for goods.” Some Media reports cite incidents in other cities but say “near San Francisco” just to ride that wave of hysteria. And many outlets like The Economist have had a hard time with “San Francisco killed more people from overdoses than from COVID-19,” which is tragically true, but for the reasons they may think, not.

You see, all of these reports have a pretty massive blind spot. San Francisco is actually the safest city in the US when it comes to COVID-19 deaths. And if the rest of the nation had had San Francisco health care, quality, and public safety so far, there would be more than 500,000 fewer Americans dead. (Though luck in the early pandemic saved the west coast from some of the horrors that New York and New Jersey experienced from March to April 2020.)

As we reconsider our behavior in the face of potential new threats, we’d like to remind that SF – with 78% full vax rate and sensible mask and other guidelines since March 2020 – has recorded 672 Covid deaths, 1/3 of the US pro -Head rate. If the US were comparable to SF, ~ 500,000 people who died from Covid would be alive.

– Bob Wachter (@Bob_Watcher) December 4, 2021

The chairman of UCSF medicine, Dr. Bob Wachter, had a semi-viral tweet a little over a week ago that really got us thinking. He found that San Francisco has “1/3 the US per capita rate” of COVID-19 deaths. So SFist did a little experiment and found the current COVID-19 death rates of the 20 largest US cities by population, and in fact, San Francisco now has by far the lowest death rate of any American city. Why is this?

“It’s a complex, multifactorial equation,” says Dr. Watcher across from SFist. “But at least part of the explanation is public health and vaccine-related behavior. For those who perceive this behavior as harshness, the question “Was it worth it?” Arises. With the hundreds, maybe thousands, of deaths averted in SF, that doesn’t seem like a difficult question to me. “

You’ll want to see the evidence, and here it is. We took the 20 largest US cities and compared their COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population by county, as reported in the New York Times. Cities and counties have to be entered manually, but we entered each one, and this is how the top 20 US cities estimate the number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people.

New York City 419

Houston 383

Jacksonville 299

San Antonio 285.5

Phoenix 278

Los Angeles 272

Philadelphia 262

Fort Worth 244

Chicago 239

Indianapolis 235.6

Dallas 215

Austin 186

Columbus 184.5

Washington, DC 170

Denver 144

San diego 131

Charlotte 117

San josé 101

Seattle 93.8

San Francisco 77

Summarize; Jacksonville, Florida has nearly quadrupled San Francisco’s COVID death rate. Houston, Texas has nearly five times the COVID death rate of San Francisco. New York City has about five and a half times the COVID death rate of San Francisco.

To date, San Francisco has recorded 679 deaths from COVID residents. In the Bay Area with nine counties, just over 6,900 people were counted. New York City has seen nearly 35,000.

9 / Finally, to get to @ MonicaGandhi9’s talk on the falling death rate from Covid, George (@ 18:00) showed the following figure, which shows that SF not only has a low fall rate (albeit not as low as that of Seattle) but had, by far, the lowest death rate / case (0.87%) of any major US city. pic.twitter.com/IpVlUBCXaV

– Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) September 11, 2020

SFist isn’t the first to discuss this. The Chronicle covered the city’s low mortality in depth in September 2020, and UCSF doctors had a panel on the matter in March. But these prices had ups and downs. Los Angeles had a lower death rate than SF last June. So things can change and this is no time to poke soccer balls or throw away masks. But San Francisco clearly did something very, very right.

“SF has some natural benefits; temperate weather but also much of the country relative wealth and many who can work from home, ”adds Wachter. He also attributes our low death rate success to “good health and lower obesity, [and a] strong medical system. “

But these are minor factors. The bottom line is that San Francisco buys masking and vaccination, and those are basically the only two factors that matter. That’s why our death rate is two-thirds lower than America as a whole. Otherwise: “I don’t think that two thirds of the deaths can be explained away,” Wachter told SFist.

Related: UCSF Docs discuss the remarkably low COVID death rate from SF and whether vaccinated individuals should fear variants [SFist]

Image: @erondu via Unsplash

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