Big Sky Times

Montana finds itself at 304 deaths per million making it 9th 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. 

 Montana’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has a peak of 300 people per million in hospitals, which isn’t anywhere near increased case numbers. 

 “Montana has just over 20% the death rate that Massachusetts has, and roughly 15% that of NY.” the commentary states. “During what is now Montana's "peak," Montana has just surpassed 5 deaths/day/million. Montana currently has 300 hospitalizations/million people--half that of Massachusetts at its peak, and 70% lower than that of New York. At the same time, Montana looks to be cresting its hospital curve, despite the near asymptotic rises in case. Again, ostensibly Montana has 7x the number of cases as Massachusetts, but somehow has only 2x the number of 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.