Peach Tree Times

Georgia finds itself at 742 deaths per million making it 38th 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.  

Georgia’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has a daily death peak of 7 people per million. 

“Georgia, like Florida, clocks in just above half the deaths/million of Massachusetts, and 40% of New York's,” the commentary states, “Georgia has had a relatively flat curve throughout in terms of hospital utilization. Daily deaths/million never went above 7. Currently, Georgia is seeing the same deaths/day/million as Massachusetts, despite warnings of "experiments in human sacrifice" when it opened up in April. It also has an unemployment rate that is 33% lower than both states, and has schools largely open for in-person instruction.”

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.