It comes to no one's surprise that Iowa is ranked in the top 10 of the list of states with the few coronavirus restrictions.Considering Iowa was one of only five states that was never in a lockdown or even a partial one and the governor has issued no state level order for facemasks, no restrictions, not even a recommendation to wear them in public. Right now, the harshest restriction we have is keeping social gatherings to groups of 10 or less.

WalletHub released a study comparing the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 11 key metrics to find out which states have the fewest coronavirus restrictions. Their data set ranges from whether child-care programs and restaurants have re-opened to the presence or absence of a “shelter-in-place” order.

Courtesy - WalletHub
Courtesy - WalletHub
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Iowa has an overall ranking of 10th place. As you can see in the above graphic, our state is in 1st place for fewest restrictions on wearing a face mask in public, re-opening child-care programs and never having a "shelter in place" order. Showing up in 16th place for large gathering restrictions can be attributed to the restrictions of 10 less people. I'm not sure how the state is ranked 28th in travel restrictions, unless they were taking into account that people weren't suppose to cross county lines into the "worst" counties before the last 22 we're opened up less than a week ago.

Source: WalletHub

South Dakota was far and away #1 on the list, followed by Wisconsin and Idaho in 2nd and 3rd place respectively. D.C., Rhode Island and Illinois finished at the bottom with the most restrictions. So, we're in the top 10 of states with the least restrictions, but we've paid for that by also having a high COVID-19 death rate. To be fair, the table below also shows state with a low amount of restrictions and a low amount of deaths. It also shows many states with many restrictions and still had a high death rate. Of course, there are many factors that come in to play from state to state, but it will interesting to see how this all plays out. No matter how this ends up, I bet we will all have a major case of "hindsight is 20/20".

Source: WalletHub
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