The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University publishes COVID-19 cases and dates by state. This is their data as of April 7, 2019. As with all images on this blog, click to enlarge.
If you are infected with the virus, how likely are you to die? Where you live makes a difference. Among all US states and territories, only American Samoa has had no cases of the virus and only Wyoming has had cases but no deaths. Both are statistical outliers. The population of American Samoa (2017 estimate) is only 55,641 and Wyoming (2020 estimate) has the smallest population of any US state with 567,025 inhabitants. Among all other US states and territories, Utah has the lowest death rate at .74% of COVID-19 cases. This is partly because Utah has the lowest median age (31) of any US state. Families in Utah have more children than families in other states. The median household size in Utah is 3.13, highest in the nation. Utah also has excellent health care infrstructure and a relatively low poverty rate. Most people know 68.01% of Utahns are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
 |
| COVID-19 Death Rates by State |
Frequently the national media publishes "beauty pageant" data ranking the US states for this, that, or the other criteria. Over the years, I have been intrigued to notice how often Utah ranks #1 for the good stuff and #50 for the bad. When the Internet was fairly new, I published a website called "ProUtah." It was a lot of work and after a couple of years, I gave it up, but in that time I compiled about 100 examples of Utah's relative superiority to the other 49 states. Some contrary examples surfaced, so I quickly put up a sister site named "ConUtah," but overall the trend was strongly favorable toward the Beehive State. My motive, of course, was to see if I could demonstrate empirically that the Latter-day Saint belief system and lifestyle led to desirable outcomes. "By their fruits ye shall know them."Matthew 7:20. This statistical approach to comparative religion, using Utah as a convenient proxy for membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, seemed to me to validate the promise in Mosiah 2:41 that adherence to God's commandments leads to temporal and spiritual blessings.