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States accused of fudging or bungling COVID-19 testing data
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of MSN News/Associated Press
Posted: May 25th, 2020
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/virus-cases-rising-in-r...
Public health officials in some states are accused of bungling coronavirus infection statistics or even using a little sleight of hand to deliberately make things look better than they are. In Virginia, Texas and Vermont, for example, officials said they have been combining the results of viral tests, which show an active infection, with antibody tests, which show a past infection. Public health experts say that can make for impressive-looking testing totals but does not give a true picture of how the virus is spreading. In Florida, the data scientist who developed the states coronavirus dashboard, Rebekah Jones, said this week that she was fired for refusing to manipulate data to drum up support for the plan to reopen. In Georgia, one of the earliest states to ease up on lockdowns and assure the public it was safe to go out again, the Department of Public Health published a graph around May 11 that showed new COVID-19 cases declining over time in the most severely affected counties. The daily entries, however, were not arranged in chronological order but in descending order. Georgia's Department of Public Health also regularly publishes a graph that shows cases over time, except new infections are not listed on the day they came back positive, which is the practice in many other states. Instead, Georgia lists new cases on the day the patient first reported symptoms. That practice can shift the timeline of the outbreak and make it appear as if the state is moving past the peak.
Note: It's quite interesting to note that they made no mention of fudging the figures to make things look worse than they are, like doctors being instructed to list cause of death as COVID-19 even when they aren't certain. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.