Granite State Times

New Hampshire finds itself at 354 deaths per million making it 17th 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.  

New Hampshire’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has stayed below 100 people per million in hospitals, which isn’t anywhere near increased case numbers.  

“New Hampshire, like many other small states with distributed populations has seen both a low death rate,” the commentary states. “New Hampshire boasts a death rate that is 1/4 that of Massachusetts, and nearly 1/6 that of New York. Hospitalizations never exceeded 100/million, and are not non-existent. Deaths/million peaked at 5/day, and there has never been a second surge, despite the state being largely open with most restrictions removed.”

 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.