Mississippi now leads the nation in deaths from COVID-19 per 100,000, usurping New Jersey, a pandemic pivotal point that until last week had held the title for 15 months. The state of Magnolia claimed the unenviable title after a month in which the rise of the delta variant pushed hospitals to the point of collapse with coronavirus patient levels at historic highs for both children and for adults.
Dr. Thomas Dobbs, a Mississippi state health officer, predicted that the state would overtake New Jersey earlier this month, shortly after Mississippi surpassed the nation’s first pandemic outbreak, New York, which now ranks third in deaths from COVID per 100,000. But it didn’t have to happen, he stressed.
“In Mississippi, we’re happy to be the last, aren’t we? And if you see some people out there, they say this is inevitable, that people are going to die, it’s not worth trying, ”the state health officer said during a roundtable discussion at the Mississippi State Medical Association on March 3. September 2021. “That’s a loser’s mindset, isn’t it?”
Since COVID-19 arrived in the state of Magnolia in March 2020, that of the state COVID-19 deaths per 100,000, also known as the gross mortality rate, has risen to 306 per 100,000 inhabitants. New Jersey, which now ranks second, reported 292 deaths per 100,000 residents, while New York, the country’s leading pandemic outbreak, reported 269 deaths per COVID per resident.
These figures are based on calculations of the gross mortality rate (that is, using the total deaths in each state and the 2020 census data. Some organizations that track deaths by COVID per 100,000, such as The New York Times, still show Mississippi slightly behind New Jersey because they still use previous census estimates for these calculations. However, older census estimates do not reflect the fact that Mississippi lost population over the past decade while New Jersey gained population.
“The power of lies is incredible”
“It’s bad. It doesn’t have to be that way,” Dr. Dobbs during the September 3 MSMA press conference. “In Mississippi we should not be pleased. We should use our tools to move forward. And this is not just at COVID. This is in all areas of health.
At the beginning of the delta variant increase in July, Mississippi was ranked No. 50 nationwide vaccinated against COVID-19. Since then, Magnolia State has risen to 46th place, now leading Alabama, Idaho, West Virginia and Wyoming. Now, about 41% of Mississippi people are completely vaccinated. Nationally, approximately 55% of Americans are fully vaccinated.
During the MSMA press conference, Dr. Dobbs attributed the reluctance of Mississippi people to get vaccinated or take other precautions to spread misinformation on social media.
“The power of lies is incredible and people who lie when this is over will not pay any price for the lies they have spread, right? When it’s all over and we’re doing the compilation, all the decisions you’ve made, that you’ve made as doctors, will be there, and the people who are lying there have no consequences for the damage they’re causing, ”he said. a lie, you are contributing to that lie. I really feel strongly about that. “
The Mississippi State Department of Health today reported an additional 85 deaths from COVID-19, including, as usual, those it identified in recent weeks that had not yet been reported. With today’s report, the state has officially surpassed 9,000 deaths from COVID-19, with more than 1,000 deaths in the last 22 days alone.
“I would have hoped we would have been your neighbor’s love, but we didn’t really adopt it as a philosophy when it came to spreading COVID,” Dr. Dobbs during the discussion on MSMA.
Despite high rates of COVID-19 in Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves vows to join other Republican governors who plan to sue the Biden administration for President Joe Biden’s vaccine or the probation warrant for companies with more of 100 employees. “This is still America and we still believe in the freedom of tyrants,” Reeves tweeted on September 9th.
The excess of deaths exceeds 12,000
The actual COVID death toll in Mississippi it is almost certainly thousands higher of the 9,061 officially confirmed: MSDH has recorded more than 12,000 excess deaths since the spring of 2020.
The “excess of deaths” measures how many more people have died from all causes in a year compared to the average number of deaths a year in recent years. At a September 2020 press conference, Dr. Dobbs said MSDH was “almost certainly counting” the deaths due to “conservative” counting procedures.
Between 2017 and 2019, an average of 32,526 Mississippi people died each year. This figure rose to 40,203 in 2020, with an excess of 7,677 deaths. Before that, the the worst year for excess deaths in the state’s recorded history had been 1918, when that number rose to 7,312 during the big flu pandemic that year.
In the first eight months of 2021, 24,564 Mississippi people died compared to an average of 20,229 over an equivalent period during the three years before the pandemic. This brings the excess deaths this year to 4,335 lives, and the excessive number of deaths in the pandemic era to more than 12,000. Currently available death data only go to August 14, 2021 and do not yet include deaths this month.
Mississippi did not confirm its first COVID-19 case until nearly two weeks after the New York and New Jersey outbreaks began. Like most other governors across the nation, Mississippi Governor Reeves ordered a closure with mandatory social distancing, although under pressure to do so. But while New York and other states that were hard hit during the first wave continued to maintain stricter public health measures afterward, Reeves began relaxing many measures in May and June 2020.
“We have learned a lot from this first wave. The only thing we learned is that, unlike New York State and New Jersey State, Mississippi never had a huge peak, ”Governor Reeves said on May 27, 2020.
In that moment, Mississippi ranks 15th out of every 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, and New York still ranked No. 1. But from the following month, New Jersey would take the lead, as three successive waves of COVID-19, including the current one, would launch strong Mississippi with spikes like Governor Reeves thought which his state had avoided. Meanwhile, the East Coast states that had been hit soon maintained more restrictions and often experienced less severe rises.
In early 2021, Mississippi ranked 8th out of every 100,000 killed by COVID-19 after being devastated by the summer and fall 2020 rises.