I’d like you to read the article below and then come back here to continue reading my comments.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hospitals-told-send-coronavirus-data-washington-not-cdc-n1233861
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OK. Here we go. The CDC has done such a poor job of managing the coronavirus data that they should have had this taken away from them a long time ago. In fact, the data collection is so poor that it is impossible to know any of the following:
- Number of confirmed new cases per day.
- Number of coronavirus-related hospitalizations.
- Mortality rate.
I don’t know about you but those seem like pretty important things to know. There are many reasons why their data is bad. I’ve enumerated them all before but allow me to summarize:
- Counting people who die “with” COVID as having died “from” COVID
- Counting people as having COVID when they haven’t even been tested (based on symptoms that could also point to a handful of other issues)
- A financial incentive for hospitals to report a patient as a COVID patient
- Inaccurate reporting of testing results
Businesses are being closed, kids will be kept from school and millions of people’s financial security is being destroyed because of decisions being made with bad data. At the very least, these decisions should be made with accurate information. What we’ve been doing hasn’t been working so why not try something else?
Apparently, there are some concerns that this data will be “politicized? Really? That ship has sailed. Assuming that the article is correct, and the data will be made public, this can only help to reduce the use of data for political gain. If the data can be made more accurate, officials will no longer get away with manipulating the numbers (or simply being ignorant of how math works) to justify restrictions.
Besides, the pandemic has already been politicized. Allow me to give some examples:
- Allowing a huge funeral for George Floyd while at the same time not allowing other families to bury a loved one
- Saying that the BLM protests are OK but other protests aren’t
- Saying that people going to a beach are spreading the virus but people looting and burning cities aren’t
- Saying that, because of racism, everyone has to wear a mask except for non-white people (yes, it really happened)
- The Los Angeles teacher’s union saying teachers won’t return to school until the police are defunded, charter schools are permanently closed, and a state-wide wealth tax is imposed.
Short story. We need information and we need it yesterday. The CDC has had months to get their act together and provide us with meaningful information and they have failed miserably. The President is proposing a solution. I say we let him give it a try. He could hardly do worse than what we’ve already have.
