At least 12 states inflated coronavirus testing count or deflated deaths

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/28/they-lie-we-die-2.html

“Test counts inflated, death tolls deflated, metrics shifted.”

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A: this has been obvious all along
B: Blame China

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And the real estate swindler who wants to date his daughter could not be happier.

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That is categorically wrong and you should rescind such defamatory suggestions! He’s not interested in “dating.”

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You are missing a zero, it was at least 120 states!

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Billions of Americans agree!

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Dear CarlMud,

What you say is true. The real estate swindler who wants to date his daughter is as surprised as anyone at his use of the euphemism.

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And this came out yesterday, which will give the “it’s not serious, let’s open up” dipshits ammo…

This, I think, shows that how the news media reports on science/medicine stories is often lacking… they are again, reporting this as fact, in the midst of us still learning about this disease. And this is NPR, which tends to be more careful than other outlets, so you can imagine what Fox is saying about it.

We’re well and truly fucked.

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But I was assured by our Top Men that the real problem was states inflating death counts and downplaying how our testing is The Best ™. I guess we’re following the Republican pattern of: “Always be dishonest, corrupt and commit plenty of fraud. You get rich and it lays a nice groundwork for complaining about how government is untrustworthy”

Honestly, I wouldn’t be that opposed to there being more nuance in the numbers by separating out whether outbreaks are in specific setting or industries, but using that as a way to underreport generally is V shady.

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I’ve found it interesting that in my state daily counts of new COVID cases are updated regularly and readily available yet COVID deaths are not. Hmmmm.

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Dead bodies tend to be a bit hard to hide, especially as they start to pile up.

(God, I hate this timeline.)

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I wasn’t expecting to end up anywhere good with a governor named Douchey. :disappointed:

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Gotta kill Grandma to keep himself a billionaire.

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In real estate parlance that’s what you’d refer to as a yard full of rapidly depreciating assets.

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As true a statement as that may be, he hasn’t been a total douche during this pandemic but that is due to quite a lot of push back from the state universities which are strong on science. He did delay reopening the state by a couple of weeks, but boy, was he chomping at the bit to please his party leaders and to help make Trump’s grand opening happen (as the article mentioned hiding models etc). Hearing his interviews and dancing around the numbers and to try to put a positive spin on things was douchey indeed!

With all this manipulation of the numbers to make opening appear better that it is / will be, I’m worried that we won’t get the true picture of the spike that will undoubtedly come in the next couple of weeks - if it’s not already happening.

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This is the expected outcome when you put public health in the hands of political hacks.

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I’m often astonished that most charts I see are missing a couple bits of info. I like this one which includes not just the total case and deaths- the most common reported figures, but also recoveries, new cases, and perhaps most important of all active cases.

Incidentally, that graph was for British Columbia, and that “active cases” curve is why this province is opening up again. Any region trying to open up before they see a similar drop in active cases is asking for trouble.

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@gabe_oakes, what site did you get this from? I live in Vancouver so am very interested in the more granular data.

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I saw somewhere somebody recommended just assuming that anybody who’s been diagnosed and not died after three weeks has recovered

That would make a sum of the last 21 days’ “new cases” an upper limit for possible active cases, which seems consistent with your graph

Unfortunately we don’t see information like “critical cases” or “hospital admissions” listed separately

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Don’t forget the mayors.

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