Garden State Times

New Jersey finds itself at 1,854 deaths per million making it 51st 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 Jersey’s deaths and hospitalizations have not followed the same path as case increases and, instead, the state has the worst death rate in the nation.. 

“New Jersey is the only state that makes New York and Massachusetts look good, having the worst death rate in the nation,” the commentary states. “However, in many ways, New Jersey outstrips both of these states. Where New York and Massachusetts continue to remain in a social deep freeze that is killing their middle class, New Jersey appears to be able to have decided to take its lumps and move on, as evidenced by their unemployment rate below the national average. New Jersey is even allowing trick-or-treating. Further, New Jersey did manage to keep hospitalizations and daily deaths lower than New York's at its peak.” 

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.