Study gives Florida 'A' on COVID-19, NJ, NY and CA get ‘F’

California, New York and New Jersey were among the worst states at handling COVID-19, according to a new study released Monday.

The study, published by the Committee To Unleash Prosperity, graded states by comparing COVID-19 outcomes based on number of deaths, economic factors like unemployment, and impact on in-person schooling.

The three categories were ranked for each state, and the average of the three was used to order states from highest to lowest. A score on a 1-100 scale was given relative to the no. 1 state – Utah.

The bottom 10 states on the study’s “Final Report Card” tended to have the strictest lockdowns, which hurt businesses and schools. The states that received an ‘F’ or worse were Illinois, California, New Mexico, New York, the District of Columbia and New Jersey.

“Shutting down their economies and schools was by far the biggest mistake governors and state officials made during COVID, particularly in blue states,” Stephen Moore, one of the study’s authors and co-founder of the Committee To Unleash Prosperity, told the Post.

The study concluded that states who maximized individual freedom for business owners, consumers, workers and parents had the best performance.

"It turns out that in most cases, citizens living in states with minimal government interventions were able to make wise health-conscious assessments without an abundance of government rules and mandates," says the paper. 

"These states came through the pandemic with the least amount of collective damage to their economies, the education of their children, and with health outcomes that were in most cases no worse that states that used more heavy-handed tactics to slow the spread," it added. 

Utah, Nebraska and Montana received ‘A+’ scores. Florida was among the six states that received an ‘A,’ and was 6th overall.

The researchers found that locked-down state economies did not have better health outcomes, excluding Hawaii and Alaska.

School closures did have a moderate correlation with mortality in the continental U.S., but researchers did not believe the relationship was causal based on the literature.

The Committee’s principals include Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media, and Steve Moore, economist and founder of the Club 4 Growth.