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comments,
ephemera, speculation, etc.
(protected political
speech and personal opinion)
2020-
2020-07-06 b
I Doubt the Count
Double-Counting
A reader in Toronto
has been in touch to flag up a possible explanation
for the rising case numbers in southern and
southwestern US states.
Your recent post
about double counting of Pillar 2 tests in
Leicestershire got me thinking whether that could be
a factor in the recent spike in cases in the U.S.
So here’s a link
to, for example, Johns
Hopkins data for Arizona.
Among other things,
the percentage of positive tests has been growing
steadily and now stands at 25%. On the face of it,
this is very alarming. It also doesn’t seem to pass
the sniff test, as hospitals should theoretically be
overwhelmed.
So here’s an
interesting disclaimer on the same page: “When
states report the number of COVID-19 tests
performed, this should include the number of viral
tests performed and the number of patients for which
these tests were performed. Currently, states may
not be distinguishing overall tests administered
from the number of individuals who have been tested.
This is an important limitation to the data that is
available to track testing in the U.S., and states
should work to address it.”
So they’re as much
as saying there’s double counting going on. And if
people who test positive get retested until they’re
negative, that would have the effect of artificially
increasing both the number of “cases” and the
“percent positive”.
The same page also
has an admonition for states not to include antibody
tests in their reporting. So if some states are
doing that, that could also help to explain the rise
in “cases” and “positive tests”.
Arizona is a more
extreme example, but Texas and Florida are also
showing strong increases in “percent positive” to
14% and 18% respectively.
Another problem with the data, in addition to
double counting, is that not all of it is up-to-date.
This story
in azcentral has a rather bed-wetting
headline, but contains this gem towards the end:
Arizonans have
reported delays in getting tested and waits of as
long as three weeks to get results. The daily cases
reported are not all from the previous day’s results
— they could have been tests conducted weeks ago.
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