"In a September 17th article by Sarah Rahal of the Detroit News, Sarah used statistics to paint the COVID-19 response record of Governor Noem in a negative light.
Specifically, she stated the following:
“South Dakota has 2,615 active cases and 193 deaths from COVID-19. The state has had a total of 17,686 cases from 171,523 people tested in a population of 880,000, meaning about of 2% of the state’s residents have gotten the virus. In comparison, Michigan has nearly 10 million people in the state, has conducted 3.5 million tests and recorded 114,692 cases and 6,631 deaths, meaning about 1.1% of residents got the virus.”
The data she presented appears to be consistent with the best data available on the topic, however, her focus upon the number of cases would give readers the false impression that Governor Noem’s policies were almost twice as harmful as the policies adopted by Governor Whitmer in Michigan.
An alternative way of presenting the same information would be:
“South Dakota has had a total of 193 deaths in a population of 880,000 from COVID-19, meaning about 0.02% of the state’s residents have died from the virus. In comparison, Michigan has nearly 10 million people in the state, has had 6,631 deaths from COVI-19, meaning about 0.06% of residents have died from the virus.”
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