Great Lakes Wire

Michigan finds itself at 762 deaths per million making it 40th 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. 

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

 “Michigan, has a death rate that is just over half that of Massachusetts, and about 2.5x less than that of NY.” the commentary states. “At its peak, its hospitalizations were 400/million. Peak daily deaths/million reached 15. Since that time, Michigan has remained largely flat, despite being nominally open. Michigan, like Maryland, has never exceeded Massachusetts' daily death rate. The same is true now where Michigan is supposedly "spiking" but hospitalizations remain at just over 100 people/million--well within the manageable range. The unemployment rate remains uncomfortably high at 8.5%. ”

 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.