COVID Led to the Biggest Drop in Births in 50 Years
April 18th, 2023Via: USA Today:
The COVID-19 pandemic led to the biggest one-year drop in U.S. births in nearly 50 years. But a new study shows not every state was equally affected.
Researchers found some states experienced steep decreases in fertility while other saw little change, according to the report published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Human Reproductions.
They discovered fluctuating fertility rates in some states were more strongly linked to demographic, economic and political factors rather than COVID-19 cases, suggesting family planning could have been partly stunted by consequences of the pandemic rather than the disease itself.
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Study authors analyzed states’ political leaning and social distancing unit, which tracked changes in people’s mobility using cellphone data. They found states with stronger social distancing responses that leaned politically liberal saw steeper fertility rate declines after the first wave of the pandemic.
For example, politically liberal places like New York and Washington, D.C., had the highest social distancing indexes and the lowest fertility rates, while conservative states like Idaho and Montana had the lowest social distancing indexes and the highest fertility rates.
Correlation is not causation. NY and DC are much more densely populated and have much more pollution than Idaho and Montana. They have more immigrants bringing in a greater variety of pathogens and more people living unhealthy lifestyles. These things and many others also affect regional fertility rates, perhaps more than political party affiliation or liberal or conservative attitudes do.
They used cellphone data to track mobility? They can tell how far apart every cellphone user is from every other cellphone user all day, every day in an entire state? What massive data collection and analysis! What a massive invasion of privacy.
Is the convenience of instant cellphone contact worth our loss of our privacy? We should return to land lines and answering machines, phone booths everywhere like they used to be, and beepers or radios for emergency personnel. They’ve worked fine for the past hundred years and would work now.
Then the ‘scientists’ who did this research would have to find another way to ‘prove’ their oranges came from an apple tree.
So what this article is saying without coming right out and saying it is that our response to Covid did more to impair fertility rates in certain areas than Covid itself.