Briand provides a graph like this for all 50 US States plus New York City, showing weekly deaths with lines of different colors for each year. The green line shows weekly mortality for Arkansas from August 2019 to August 2020. Although there is an anomalous late increase in mortality in July and August, it does not reach as high as the 2017-18 peak shown in yellow. Briand and Rancourt et al both document that there was a marked increase in deaths from suicides, drug overdoses, and homicides in summer 2020, as shown in Briand's graph of US mortality from non-natural causes, which is a significant factor in the anomalous summer increases seen in many states and in Canada.
This lack of increase over prior years was true for all seven states that did not issue stay-at-home orders, and is dramatically better than many regions that had very harsh social isolation mandates. Ironically many of the regions with extremely poor outcomes were praised by advocates of social isolation and solitary confinement due to their strict policies, as described in the comments under the graphs for New York City and Michigan.
This lack of increase over prior years was true for all seven states that did not issue stay-at-home orders, and is dramatically better than many regions that had very harsh social isolation mandates. Ironically many of the regions with extremely poor outcomes were praised by advocates of social isolation and solitary confinement due to their strict policies, as described in the comments under the graphs for New York City and Michigan.
