Arizona COVID death is Inexplicable
Pre-vaccine and lethal variants versus post-vaccine and less-lethal ones
Average monthly COVID death in Arizona more than doubled after vaccines became available, and when Omicron was dominant, deaths were too high, given what is known about the infection fatality rate of Omicron.
The implied total number of Omicron infections to get over 6000 Arizona deaths after 10 Dec 2021 is at least 10.2 million COVID infections — but Arizona only has 7.3 million people.
Peak daily death prior to vaccines was a 7-day average daily death of 83, which coincided with a 16% positivity rate on the COVID tests performed.
After vaccines though, the average daily death rate on 29 Jan 2022 hit 103 (24% higher than the highest death seen before vaccines).
That local peak in COVID death coincided with 25% COVID test positivity, indicating that COVID infections were 56% more prevalent when COVID deaths were 24% higher.
But the deaths back in July of 2020 were likely from wild-type COVID, a strain of COVID which was at least 3 times more lethal than Omicron variant, and more likely 6 times more lethal than Omicron.
The incidence of new infection required in order to achieve a 7-day average daily death rate of 103 from Omicron variant would involve over 1.5 million new COVID infections per day (7-day total of new infections = 100% of Arizona population) — because at least 1560 COVID infections are required in order to produce one death — yet test positivity never even reached 40% there.
The peak COVID positivity rate in Arizona was 35% on 23 Jan 2022.
Reference
[12 total deaths from 37,296 Omicron infections; i.e., 3108 COVID infections required to produce one COVID death] — Ulloa AC, Buchan SA, Daneman N, Brown KA. Estimates of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant Severity in Ontario, Canada. JAMA. Published online February 17, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.2274. Available: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2789408