Rokita
Last Saturday morning, Indiana Attorney General (AG) Todd Rokita released a multi-year analysis of COVID-19 data, shedding light on a great deal of misinformation about the pandemic that has been long accepted as factual.
In particular, the report, which is available at tinyurl.com/RokitaCovidReport, details inflated infection and death rates, uncovers the ineffectiveness of social distancing and mask mandates, and shows strong correlations between the e-learning programs and lower literacy rates.
Metadata analysis shows that U.S. policies on lockdowns (and by extension school closings) only had a 0.2 percent effect on mitigating infection rates.
In looking closely at death rates, the AG’s report found statistics inflated by counting people who died with COVID as having died because of COVID. Examples include gunshot wounds, fires, car accidents, blunt force trauma, drowning, and drug overdoses counted as COVID deaths.
According to the AG’s report, Indiana Management Performance Hub (MPH) reported positivity rates soared over 30 percent during several months of 2020, but the analysis (pulled from several studies, including one done by the University of Washington) found that Indiana’s positivity rate was consistently under 5 percent during every month of 2020. Thus, lockdowns and mandates used by state officials were based on unsound positivity rates.
The AG’s office strongly advises that policymakers establish a process that requires pandemic-related decisions to be based solely on high-quality research and sound data rather than anecdotal findings. The office also recommends keeping Indiana’s economy and educational institutions fully open for business during future public health challenges.
Again, the full report is available online at tinyurl.com/RokitaCovidReport, and The Reporter encourages readers to review it for themselves.
From my academic research experience, my first impression about the example Todd Rokita cherry picks (with some cute soundbites) to discuss Sweden’s COVID response, seems to miss the data that 87.1% of the people in Sweden received at least one vaccination (Public Health Agency of Sweden, 2022). I am sure Sweden would love to share some data about their healthcare system compared to Indiana.