Arizona finds itself at 813 deaths per million making it 43rd in the country when it comes to COVID-related deaths, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
The project found that when it comes to COVID-19 data, state authorities often have been looking at decontextualized data, which is causing hysteria like children staying out of school and businesses shutting down.
Arizona’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state’s daily deaths peaked at 11 people per million.
“Arizona, one of the most maligned ‘second wavers’ has a death rate 60% that of Massachusetts, and less than 1/2 that of New York,” the commentary states. “At it's peak, Arizona's hospital utilization was 50% that of NYC, and about 80% that of Massachusetts. However, the substantially lower number of daily deaths indicates that they were likely able to hospitalize more at-risk people.”
Since Sept. 15, there has been a significant increase in testing for COVID-19 at 55 percent, which has also led to an increase in positive cases, leading many to assume the country is heading into a third wave of infections and deaths.
Emily Burns with The Pragmatist writes that it’s important to put the new numbers into context so that people will make wise decisions regarding what to do about the pandemic. She writes that in May, cases were tracked at nearly the same as hospitalizations. She notes that deaths and hospitalizations are more reliable data when tracking than cases are.
With COVID-19 testing up 70 percent since the second wave, Burns points out that the surge in testing is responsible for the increased number of new cases seen across the nation, not an increased infection rate many have been led to believe.
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