Golden State Today

California finds itself at 444 deaths per million making it 48th 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. 

California’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has seen very low numbers of hospitalization and deaths.

“[California] is currently in line with Massachusetts in terms of daily people hospitalized, but has fewer than 1/2 Massachusetts' daily deaths,” the commentary states. “However, this low death rate comes with a very steep unemployment rate--11%, 49th out of 51. Colorado, with slightly fewer deaths/million, and an unemployment rate that is half that of California ought perhaps to give California heart that it can safely open up more of its economy without a drastic increase in deaths.”

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.