Natural State News

Arkansas finds itself at 621 deaths per million making it 31st 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, people have been looking at decontextualized data, which is causing hysteria like children staying out of school and businesses shutting down. 

 Arkansas’ deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has stayed just below 200 people per million in hospitals and just over 5 deaths per million per day, which isn’t anywhere near increased case numbers. 

 “Arkansas has just over 40% the death rate of Massachusetts, and just over 1/3 that of New York,” the commentary states. “It has managed to keep hospitalizations relatively flat, currently just kissing 200 people hospitalized/million--less than 1/3 that of Massachusetts at its height, and 20% of New York's peak. Hospitalizations and deaths are diverging, with deaths sinking, while hospitalizations grow slightly. Arkansas has only 2x the number of deaths, at just over 5 deaths/million/day to Massachusetts'.”

 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.