Covid Data - accuracy, consistency and reliability

[MickintheHam]

The link says it all.

https://www.al.com/news/2020/08/can-alabamas-coronavirus-numbers-be-trusted-maybe-sort-of-not-exactly.html

Anyone who has spent 30 seconds reading any of my posts on Covid 19 knows I have said data being used does not meet any standard whatsoever. The CDC has obviously not outlined to the individual states how to manage and report data. My guess is it's all suspect.

In Alabama, some labs were not reporting data to the State Health Dept. They didn't know they had to. The state didn't know the labs were testing. As the author points out his small home county has had daily spikes. It turns out the spikes were the result of the labs starting to report and catching up on the backlog. The likely result is that when data showed good results, it probably wasn't so good. When data showed dire results, well it probably wasn't so bad. To some extent this is likely happening a number of places. The data makes little sense.

Again, it is an indictment of the health departments and the CDC specifically, They were not ready for this pandemic nor any pandemic. The entire medical community should be embarrassed. People can argue they needed more funding. The truth of the matter is no amount of money makes up for ineptitude. The healthcare workers in hospitals have done outstanding work durning the crisis, but the medical people in charge of leading us through the crisis iare clownish at best. There is no defending their ineptitude and lack of preparedness. Accurate, consistent and reliable data is at the heart of any reporting system. Decisions affecting the citizenry are a stab in the dark.

[CitizenBBN]

Maybe if the CDC wasn't being charged with studying gun control they might focus on their actual job, which is pandemic threats if it's anything.

They've been bad throughout this. Misjudged the initial risk, refused to quickly get testing ramped up, insisted they make the tests, botched that production, etc.

I posted a link here months ago that was a great investigative report. When the doctor in Washington first saw this and filed for an emergency exception to test, the CDC said they couldn't consider it b/c he only sent email, and they also needed a mailed hardcopy. That's what we're up against.

I have no doubt Covid is killing people, but I have real doubts about how many. I think it's significant, but it could be half and still be really significant. Same with testing.

The US system isn't really set up for this kind of thing. In the medical world we sort of have the worst of both worlds. Just enough government control and regulation there's no free market, but not enough government that things can be coordinated in a consistent way.

Not that government in the US would do such a thing. If you want an example of how good reporting would be in the leftist dream of socialized government medicine, just look at the state of the 50 state Unemployment systems. They are running on systems that private companies abandoned when I was in high school.

it's a mess, but the CDC stands out as singularly ineffective given this is largely their purpose for existing.

[Doc]

There are multiple issue in play, not just the health depts and cdc. They are a big part but not the only part. People hollar "follow the science" when science supports their point of view but ignore it when ot does not. People also hollar "follow the science" even when it is bad or bias science. The politics of it is astounding. People want to blame opposition when there is nothing to blame. People want state contol the blame then federal govt for failures. Etc

But as far as data and reporting, I too have said all along that the data is basically worthless. Testing ONLY people who show signs will artifically raise your infection rate, as FL did. Not reporting negative tests will artificially raise your infection rate, as FL did. Reporting all deaths as Covid deaths if the patient is positive regardless of cause of death(ie being killed in a motorcycle accident) will raise your death rate, as FL did. Flawed stats used by the CDC make the data worthless. It has been this way from the get go.

[KeithKSR]

Our county has had two listed covid deaths. The first was a lady with stage 4 cancer. Her husband said she had no symptoms at the time of death. The health department said they had to report any death as a covid death if they had it when they died, no matter what the actual cod was. The other was a high school classmate and friend who died earlier this week from the virus.

[MickintheHam]

While seemingly anecdotal, those stories are happening all across the country.