How Arizona Indian Country Has Fared in Pandemic Deaths

 


A discussion today over on the CoronavirusAZ subreddit about Arizona death rates got me thinking about how Indian country fared on this outcome. A little over a year ago I blogged about how the tribes in Northeast Arizona were killing it with their vaccination programs. 

Even today, their vaccination rates make the state's largest county look lame. According to this recent ranking, out of 15 counties in the state Apache County is number one (95% vaccinated), Navajo County is number four (75.3%), and Maricopa County comes in at number ten (55.8%). 

So how have these counties fared in terms of death rates? I got data on reported deaths from the ASU Dashboard, converted these figures to new deaths per 100K population, then took the seven-day average of that. 

Here is a chart based on that data:


Sadly, the tribes' excellent vaccination uptake didn't save them from higher death rates than Maricopa County, save for a few random days. Overall the latter is below the two other counties. That just goes to show how much other factors, like lack of running water, crowded living conditions, and poor access to health care impact death rates.

That said, for the spring of last year the excellent vaccination uptake moved Indian country to pretty close to Maricopa county in death rates, despite the disadvantages just mentioned. Then the deadlier Delta and more contagious Omicron variants made the disparities manifest again.

The other notable thing in the graph is just how much death rates plunged in April last year for all three counties. That's just when vaccination rates were picking up in a big way, with a surge of the people who are not stupid getting their shots. 

The morons who say the vaccines don't work would only have to look at a graph like this to see how wrong they are...if they cared about facts, that is.

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