Crickets From Media As COVID Hospitalizations Rise In The North, Drop In The South

The corporate media outlets that bashed southern, often Republican-led states during the Delta-variant surge of COVID-19 are now silent as hospitalizations are falling in the south and have risen in the north.

The total number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Region 4, which consists of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, is down more than 73% since Sept. 1, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In HHS Region 3 (Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia), hospitalizations surged almost 1,000% from late-July to late-September, and have hardly fallen since.

During the Delta wave, some media outlets repeatedly heaped blame on southern states for driving the surge. CNN emphasized that eight states made up half of COVID-19 hospitalizations. MSNBC wrote that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was beginning to “lose the plot.” CBS News said, “Hospitals in Southern states are pushed to the brink.”

The south did experience a harsh Delta wave. HHS Region 4 saw an increase in hospitalized patients of 955% from July 1 to Sep. 1. In HHS Region 6 (Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arkansas and Louisiana), the surge was over 700%. But both those regions have seen hospitalizations plummet back toward pre-Delta levels in the weeks since. (RELATED: COVID-19 Looks To Be On The Way Out, So Why Aren’t The Restrictions?)

Meanwhile, in HHS Region 3, hospitalizations jumped from 692 on July 15 to a peak of 6,572 on Sep. 19, and today they remain above 5,400. In HHS Region 1 (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut), hospitalizations jumped from 180 on July 13 to 1,330 on Sep. 16, and remain above 1,100 now. In HHS Region 2 (New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands), hospitalizations surged from 651 on July 10 to 3,902 on Sep. 8, and only just dropped below 3,000 last week.

The media coverage for these parts of the country, which are still close to their Delta peak in hospitalizations compared to the quickly-recovering southern states, is quite different. Rather than bashing the leadership of New York or Michigan, where hospitalizations are essentially flat and still increasing, respectively, CNN writes that “As Covid cases drop in Georgia and Florida, some states with colder weather see an increase.”

MSNBC is running opinion pieces critical of Florida’s Surgeon General, with little-to-no coverage of the ongoing struggle to contain the virus in the northeast. Like CNN, ABC News is pinning the increase on the weather, not leadership, with headlines like “States with cold weather see uptick in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations.”

Still, the southern recovery is receiving less coverage than the previous surge. As for the entirety of the pandemic, the states with the highest death rates are Mississippi, New Jersey, Alabama, Louisiana, New York and Arizona, states diverse in geography, politics and climate.

Aren’t the Northeastern states the most vaccinated in the nation?

Certainly among the most, yes. We're seeing some interesting data coming out of the Northeastern states already. For instance, death certificate information submitted by state health departments to the National Center for Health Statistics and reported out by the CDC shows the following with respect to deaths *involving COVID for the following selection of Northeastern states:

Maine: 10 deaths involving COVID in August 2020; 45 such deaths in August 2021. 13 deaths involving COVID in September 2020; 130 such deaths in September 2021. Complete data for October 2021 has, of course, not yet been compiled, but already there have been 60 deaths involving COVID this month, compared to 10 such deaths in October 2020.

Vermont: 0 deaths involving COVID in August 2020; 17 such deaths in August 2021. 0 deaths involving COVID in September 2020; 43 such deaths in September 2021. 0 deaths involving COVID in October 2020; 10 such deaths so far in October 2021.

New Hampshire: 14 deaths involving COVID in August 2020; 39 such deaths in August 2021. Between 1 and 9 deaths involving COVID in September 2020 (i.e., for privacy purposes, the CDC does not specify a number when there are fewer than 10 deaths -- that is to say, between 1 and 9 -- in a given reporting period); 62 such deaths in September 2021. 42 deaths involving COVID in October 2020; 46 such deaths so far in October 2021.

Connecticut: 30 deaths involving COVID in August 2020; 125 such deaths in August 2021. 43 deaths involving COVID in September 2020; 123 such deaths in September 2021. 45 deaths involving COVID in October 2020; 16 such deaths in October 2021 (as to this, it appears that the information being reported out of Connecticut is lagging a bit more than in other states; the information is typically updated on a daily basis).

Massachusetts: 117 deaths involving COVID in August 2020; 161 such deaths in August 2021. 101 deaths involving COVID in September 2020; 330 such deaths in September 2021. 198 deaths involving COVID in October 2020; 136 such deaths reported so far in October 2021.

In absolute terms, these are, of course, small numbers. For the most part these are small states with relatively small populations. But the trend seems to be distinct. No one in these states had been vaccinated in August, September, or October of 2020, whereas, as of August, September, and October of 2021, a large percentage of these states' populations had been.

Interestingly, each of these states showed decreased numbers of deaths involving COVID in July 2021, compared to July 2020. Things only began to change (and rather radically so) in August 2021. Why that is, I for one can only speculate.

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*The CDC defines "deaths involving COVID" in these terms: " Deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1."

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