Gov. MLG’s Red to Green framework doesn’t even hold up on its own logic

The Rio Grande Foundation is happy to see Gov. MLG (finally) moving to reopen New Mexico by bringing more counties into the Turquoise (most free) level in her recently-released framework. But we have never bought into her concept and consider the data below one of the reasons why.

The Gov.’s framework is based on three basic data sets outlined below. Broadly speaking, for the first two (case rate and positivity) lower is better while a higher vaccination rate is better.

But, to indicate how senseless the entire system is, take a look at the three real-world counties below. Two of the three are “turquoise” while one of them is “yellow.” Which one is it? Does it make any sense whatsoever? We say no and explain below.

Check out the actual county data cut-and-pasted below. We don’t want ANY New Mexico county to be in a more restrictive category. In fact, we STRONGLY believe that Gov. Lujan Grisham should end the emergency order IMMEDIATELY. But, the data presented below (and above) show Roosevelt County (Portales area) to be in the least restrictive turquoise category while Chaves County (Roswell) is performing better on all three metrics and yet remains in yellow.

San Juan County (Farmington area), also in turquoise, has much higher case rates and test positivity, but does have a higher vaccination rate. What is driving the disparity? Who knows? It is hard to make sense out of a senseless system.