Arizona is Worst Among States in Pandemic Deaths on All Measures But One


Reports have come out before suggesting that Arizona has a poor record when it comes to pandemic deaths. A couple weeks ago I blogged about how state officials were trying to obfuscate this fact by raising questions about the validity of comparisons among states.

This week the Arizona Public Health Association released an analysis detailing Arizona's dismal performance in terms of pandemic deaths. It looks across the whole pandemic, undermining criticisms that reporting differences between states make comparisons invalid; it also compares numbers before and after the pandemic and compares them to other diseases which should control for any between-state differences.

As detailed in the report, compared to other states, Arizona:

  • Had the second-highest number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 residents (second only to Mississippi)
  • Had the greatest increase in deaths from all causes compared to the "before times" in both 2020 and 2021
  • Had COVID-19 as the number one cause of death compared to other diseases (cancer, heart disease, etc.) versus it being the number three cause in the U.S. overall
  • Had the highest ratio of deaths from COVID-19 of any state as compared to
    • Hearth disease (about 1.2 COVID-19 deaths for every heart disease death)
    • Cancer (about 1.3 to 1)
  • Had a greater decrease in life expectancy due to the pandemic (2.8 years) than the U.S. overall (2.1 years) 
So yeah, not a great record on the part of our executive leadership.

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