Time Until Reopen and Politics

I see you on the street and you walk on by
You make me want to hang my head down and cry
--Madonna

Although political bias seemed apparent as we went into lockdown, it now seems obvious as various states look to re-open their economies. Using party affiliation (D = Democratic, R = Republican) of the state governor as a proxy, let's list some states moving to re-open large portions of their economies:

Georgia - R
Iowa - R
Ohio - R
Tennessee - R
Texas - R
West Virginia - R

Now for states signaling reluctance to end lockdowns soon:

California - D
Michigan - D
New Jersey - D
New York - D
Oregon - D
Washington - D

A small and perhaps selective sample. But to my knowledge as of this date, there is no R state digging in its heels proclaiming that it will remain closed for the foreseeable future, nor is there a D state hustling to re-open.

Pressure does seem likely to build on laggards as leaders unlock the shackles. It will be difficult to keep people locked down in places like California when those prisoners see freemen going about their business once again in other states.

Meanwhile, building on the Days to Shutdown metric discussed previously, let's define a metric called Time Until Reopen. Suppose we measure it in terms of the number of days from the peak COVID death count in a state until that state rescinds a majority percentage (e.g., 80%) of its original lockdown orders.

The proposition is this: On average, D states will have a significantly higher Time Until Reopen than will R states.

Although many possible reasons might explain why political bias exists in the COVID situation, distilling those possibilities down into a lucid explanation of the factors at work in this case remains a task for the future.