COVID-19 in Utah

 

Because I wanted to know, I pulled data from CDC and IBIS-PH (Utah's Public Health Data) to visualize Covid-19 mortality over the last year and be able to mark clearly when it surpassed mortality rates for Utah's 1st (Heart Disease), 2nd (Cancer), and 8th (Suicide) highest causes of death.

I used the mortality data from IBIS-PH over the last 5 years to determine the average yearly counts for those causes of death for the state.  Then a simple calculation to see the number of people typically expected to die from those causes each week.  If you're curious, they are:

* Heart Disease: 3712 deaths per year, 71.4 per week

* Cancer: 3183 deaths per year, 61.2 per week

* Suicide 641 deaths per year, 12.3 per week

I graphed those values against weekly Covid-19 mortality counts.  

Since 4/20/2020, Utah has seen higher Covid mortality than expected suicide rates.  

Since 11/16/2020 (when the Governor called for a 2 week voluntary, firm lockdown via Emergency alert), Covid mortality has been higher than cancer.

Since 11/22/2020, it has been higher than the #1 cause of death in Utah, heart disease, less a short dip we had in December.

You can also see that not only is Covid-19 the highest cause of mortality in Utah right now, but by a considerable margin.  It has a 67% higher rate of mortality (119 deaths per week) than the highest cause of death in Utah for the last five years (71.4 deaths per week).  

It's not a surprise that today we received news that the more contagious variant of Covid-19 has been detected in Utah.  It's likely been here for a few weeks now.  But, what it does mean is that these numbers will continue to rise, now more than ever.  Especially with no lock-down mitigations in place, as we're seeing in Europe.  And we also know that this strain is affecting younger populations more than the previous strain.  Which...how to put this...is double bad.

Stay home.  Stay safe.  Get your vaccine as soon as you possibly can.

P.S.  For all those (mind-bogglingly misinformed) folks out there who keep screaming, "But it's just the fluuuuuu!" - I woke up this morning and added in Influenza for you.  It's the green line.