Sooner State News

Oklahoma finds itself at 335 deaths per million making it 13th 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.  

Oklahoma’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has slightly above 200 people per million in hospitals, which isn’t anywhere near increased case numbers. 

“Oklahoma has done an exemplary job managing the pandemic, keeping the balance between saving lives and livelihoods intact. Oklahoma's death rate is less than 1/4 that of Massachusetts, and roughly 1/6 that of New York.” the commentary states, “hospitalizations have recently crept above 200/million. Even at its "peak”, Oklahoma never had more than 3 deaths/day/million-- equivalent to Massachusetts' best day ever. Oklahoma, has 3x the number of cases as Massachusetts, but deaths are identical. Additionally, the 2-fold increase in cases has not resulted in any 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.