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Hardly ‘least touched’

Doug Wilson recently stated that the reason we don’t need to wear masks and socially distance in Latah county is that “Idaho is one of the least touched states in the union. And Latah County is one of the least touched counties in the state of Idaho. We are right at the bottom of the risk territory.”

The logic of the argument is, of course, a common fallacy. However, at least this time the premise of his statement can easily be fact-checked. Here are the numbers related to COVID (from worldometer.com, Idaho.gov, and dnews.com) as of Sept. 27:

Idaho has 40,501 cases and 460 deaths, ranking 20th in most cases (22,663 per million, slightly above the U.S. average) and 37th in deaths (257 per million, less than half of the U.S. average) within the United States. That is hardly the “least touched state.”

Latah county most recently had a case positivity rate of 9.7 percent (U.S. average around 5 percent). Twenty-eight counties in Idaho have reported fewer cases than Latah, and taking population into account, Latah county is the 13th least affected county in Idaho (9,973 cases per million).

Just for comparison — my home country of Germany has about a third of Latah County’s cases (3,432). Spain, the worst affected European country that is considered in terrible shape has 15,723 cases per million (better than the state of Idaho), and New Zealand has 366 cases and 5 deaths per million. So much for the “bottom of the risk territory,” whatever that even means. Facts matter.

Steffen Werner
Moscow

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