Beehive State News

Utah finds itself at 187 deaths per million making it 7th 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. 

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

“Utah is one of those states that is perennially flogged as having exploding case numbers, but whose deaths and hospitalizations just refuse to rise,” the commentary states. “Utah's death rate is 1/8th that of Massachusetts, and 1/10th that of New York. Utah has never had a formal lockdown, and does not have a statewide mask mandate--and there are counties that refuse to implement them. 

“Despite this, Utah has never had hospitalizations go above 100/million, and deaths have never risen above 2/million/day. Even now, when Utah supposedly has 5 times the case load (per capita) or Massachusetts, Utah's death rate is half that of Massachusetts, 1.5 deaths/million/day. But this hasn't stopped the fear-mongering. On October 25th, CNN and The Salt Lake Tribune both ran articles suggesting that Utah hospitals would soon have to begin rationing care. At 5% Utah has the 7th lowest unemployment rate. Despite the clear success of Utah, there is currently a push to add more regulations, given the case increase. ”

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.