There is all kinds of math going on right now all over America. Math as it relates to counting fatalities caused by COVID-19. The closer I look at it the more my head wants to explode.

Some outlets report COVID-19 deaths in our state are going under-reported. Suddenly the rules are being changed once again and fatalities in Texas grew by over 600 people on Monday leaving many feeling more and more like none of these reports make a whole lot of sense.

So what changed? Well, the Texas Department of State Health Services says they just want to be able to go by deaths that are marked on death certificates as caused by COVID-19. Prior to Monday, Texas relied on local and regional health departments to verify each report.  State Health Services says the new method will not include deaths of those who had the virus but did not die as a direct result of it. Hard for some to believe.

Kerannews.org reports the breakdown of fatalities in Texas shows an overrepresentation of the Hispanic population making up 47% of deaths while representing 40% of the state's population. White Texans make up 35% of the deaths, while Black Texans represent 14% of deaths. Prior to these changes, Texas had 18% of the state's deaths classified as "unknown" back in June.

In Texas, the reports say Men are more likely to have died from coronavirus accounting for 60% of deaths. 3% of deaths in Texas came from residents under the age of 40.

Officials say the first coronavirus death in Texas took place on March 16th in Matagorda County. As of this week, Texas says about 5700 people have died from the virus according to officials.

While very little of the data coming out helps readers to grasp all the details, the good news is that numbers seem to have slowed a bit here at the end of July. We still see triple-digit reports of deaths on a daily basis. One of the worst days on record for new cases of COVID-19 was July 15th when the state saw 10,791 new cases. This past Sunday, the number of new cases was 5810. We got a long way to go.

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