Ocean State Today

Rhode Island finds itself at 1,134 deaths per million making it 46th 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. 

Rhode Island’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state had slightly over 300 people per million in hospitals at its peak and 17 deaths per million per day, which isn’t anywhere near increased case numbers. 

“Rhode Island, like most of the early-peaking northeast states has a very high death rate, about 20% lower than Massachusetts, and 33% lower than New York. However,” the commentary states, “Rhode Island had a much flatter initial curve, with just over 300 hospitalizations/million at peak--half that of Massachusetts, and 70% lower than New York. Peak daily deaths were at 17/day/million. Rhode Island has 3x the cases as Massachusetts. ”

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.