Constitution State News

Connecticut finds itself at 1291 deaths per million making it 2nd 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. 

Connecticut's deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has a spike in observed cases, and substantially lower deaths. 

“The prevailing narrative is that this is due to incredible compliance with social distancing protocols,” the commentary states. “Likely it has far more to do with the virulence of the initial outbreak and some levels of immunity within this population. Connecticut enjoys the second lowest unemployment rate (after NJ)  of all of the early-peaking northeast states. It ought to give some courage to these other governors that they can further open their economies without seeing a resurgence.”

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