Rhode Island
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 Rhode Island from August 2019 to August 2020. Rhode Island had poor outcomes compared to other states, and over half of states had no increased over prior years. The large green spike starting in March 2020 was identical in many regions thousands of miles apart, which is not how viruses act. These spikes occurred immediately after the declaration of the pandemic with extreme fear-based pandemic response measures, and these are a more likely cause, as argued by Briand and Rancourt et al in their thorough analyses of all cause mortality data from the US and Canada.
However, many states with very similar population density to Rhode Island, had no increase in deaths at all over prior years, despite having relatively mild social isolation mandates. These states, such as South Dakota, were often heavily criticized by social isolation advocates like Anthony Fauci and Scott Gottlieb, who said it was allowing the virus to spread "unfettered". Below are links to the graphs for each of the seven states that never issued stay-at-home orders, with comments under each one about their lack of increased mortality over prior years: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Here are links to articles on the harsh criticisms South Dakota received from Gottlieb (Mayer 2021) and Fauci (Czachor 2021), who also often praised states with the worst outcomes saying things like "they did it correctly" (Jones 2021).
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 Rhode Island from August 2019 to August 2020. Rhode Island had poor outcomes compared to other states, and over half of states had no increased over prior years. The large green spike starting in March 2020 was identical in many regions thousands of miles apart, which is not how viruses act. These spikes occurred immediately after the declaration of the pandemic with extreme fear-based pandemic response measures, and these are a more likely cause, as argued by Briand and Rancourt et al in their thorough analyses of all cause mortality data from the US and Canada.
However, many states with very similar population density to Rhode Island, had no increase in deaths at all over prior years, despite having relatively mild social isolation mandates. These states, such as South Dakota, were often heavily criticized by social isolation advocates like Anthony Fauci and Scott Gottlieb, who said it was allowing the virus to spread "unfettered". Below are links to the graphs for each of the seven states that never issued stay-at-home orders, with comments under each one about their lack of increased mortality over prior years: Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Here are links to articles on the harsh criticisms South Dakota received from Gottlieb (Mayer 2021) and Fauci (Czachor 2021), who also often praised states with the worst outcomes saying things like "they did it correctly" (Jones 2021).
