Can’t blame Murphy for NJ COVID mortality |

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Some partisans so desire to make powerful accusations against their rivals that concern for truth is quickly overwhelmed. So Democrats wrongly blame President Trump for coronavirus deaths during his time in office, and Republicans wrongly blame President Biden for COVID deaths since.

Early in the pandemic in 2020 and before such blame revved up, we thought it was inevitable and strongly advised against it. “There is no basis for trying to blame COVID deaths on governmental or health officials for decisions made with insufficient information and often under pressure and time constraints,” we said then. “New Jersey and New York had the misfortune to be the earliest, biggest COVID-19 hotspot in America, so their elected officials and medical communities had to fight the virus with little specific understanding of how to reduce its illness spread or treat the it causes . That denser populations often in close quarters ensured high numbers of cases and deaths.”

There are so many variables determining the susceptibility of populations to COVID — many of them beyond current medical understanding — that honest and fair comparisons will never be possible. Some people will make them anyway, and a recent one turned up as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper.

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Titled “A final report card on the states’ response to COVID-19,” the study ranks states according to their combined scores on economic, education and mortality data points. New Jersey unsurprisingly ranks last overall.

Such working papers seldom get much attention. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal made this one the subject of its lead editorial and said “it’s time to draw some conclusions about government policy and results” on the basis of the study.

Utah led small states at the top of the ranking, scoring well on its economy, fewer days in school lost, and eighth best in COVID mortality. The editorial praised Florida, a big state, for ranking sixth, with a strong economy and fewer school days lost thanks to shorter lockdowns, which offset a mortality rate in the middle of the pack.

The bottom ranking of New Jersey and New York fueled harsh editorial judgments against them. “Albany’s severe and overlong economic shutdown had no payoff in mortality. New Jersey ranks last with a miserable performance across the board. Govt. Phil Murphy didn’t save lives, but he did savage the economy and punish students as he followed the teachers union demands on school closures.”

This is unfair. New York and New Jersey were destined to have the highest COVID mortality rates (383 and 380 deaths per 100,000 in this study) because that’s where the coronavirus exploded like a bomb across a tightly packed population at the start of the US pandemic. There was no treatment or vaccine available, and there was no knowledge how the virus spread or what could be done to keep those seriously sick alive. Such knowledge, gained at the cost of many lives, helped those in every other state.

This terrible experience of course provoked sterner and longer shutdowns, and fewer days of in-school education. When many people, including us, rightly urged a sooner reopening of commerce and schools, it was met with the excess of caution to be expected after the devastation at the epicenter of a plague.

New Jersey and New York, their governors and legislatures, deserve criticism for their economic and educational policies — before, during, at the close of the pandemic and ongoing. Blaming them for the consequences of being the US population most at risk to a global highly contagious disease is unconvincing and weakens the case for fixing their chronic problems.

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