Beaver State News

Oregon finds itself at 160 deaths per million making it 6th 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. 

 Oregon’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has stayed below 75 people per million in hospitals and a daily death rate of 2 deaths per million, which isn’t anywhere near increased case numbers. 

“Oregon enjoys one of the lowest death rates in the country, at 1/8 th that of Massachusetts, and 1/11th that of New York, and undoubtedly lower than the deaths it experiences during the same period for flu,” the commentary states. “Hospitalizations have never exceeded more than 75/million. Deaths/day/million never exceeded 2. Cases are currently climbing, but there is no concomitant climb in hospitalizations or deaths.

“Oregon economy remains largely shut, undoubtedly the reason for its very low numbers. Oregon may end up being an economic casualty to its COVID response, the very low numbers will make it very hard to politicians there to re-open until there is a vaccine, leaving the middle class there exposed to the economic ravages of lockdowns, and the poor losing out on a year of education.” 

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.