Equality State News

Wyoming finds itself at 150 deaths per million making it 4th 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. 

Wyoming’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has slightly above 100 people per million in hospitals, which isn’t anywhere near increased case numbers. 

“In Wyoming we have yet another Western red state that has done a great job keeping deaths and hospitalizations low, but is currently being. Wyoming has the 4th lowest deaths/capita, a rate that is 1/10th that of Massachusetts, and 1/12th that of New York,” the commentary states. 

“Daily deaths/million have never exceeded 3, and are currently in line with Massachusetts' 3 deaths/day/million. Hospitalizations have only just recently crept above 100/million, a rate that is only slightly higher than Massachusetts now, and is 1/5 what Massachusetts saw at its peak, and 1/10th what New York saw. In theory Wyoming currently has a case rate that is 5x that of Massachusetts, but a death rate that is the same. Wyoming maintains an admirably low unemployment rate of 6.1%, or 16th in the nation.”

 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.