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18 States Are Double-& Triple-Counting COVID-19 Cases

 

By:  David Deschesne

Fort Fairfield Journal, August 12, 2020

 

   According to covidtracking.com, an initiative of The Atlantic magazine to collate all of the U.S. states’ COVID-19 data into one spot, there are at least 18 states in the U.S. that are counting multiple cases of COVID-19 against the same person if that person receives more than one test.  This means if a person tested positive for COVID-19, then went back a week later to check their status and tested positive again, then tested a third time another week later, that person would actually be counted as “3 positive cases” instead of the same person testing three times.  This has caused the case numbers in some states to be elevated artificially much higher than they would be in reality if only the total number of people infected was counted into the case numbers.  Those states counting the same person more than once are:

 

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

California

Connecticut

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Maine

Michigan

Minnesota

New Jersey

Oklahoma

South Carolina

Texas

Virginia

Wyoming

 

   These states are not counting “people tested,” rather, they are simply counting the “specimens tested.” This is leading to some serious muddling of the data both in determining actual people infected and calculating the overall infection rate to determine herd immunity levels.

   The site, covidtracking.com explains in its notes on these states that they are, “reporting specimens tested,” and “because some people are tested more than once, this number is probably higher than the number of people tested.”

   Over counting the positive cases leads to a drastic increase in the number of cases, but obscures the actual number of individual people infected.  The states promulgating this over counting cross the political and population density spectrum from New Jersey and Maine on one end to Wyoming and Texas on the other.

   All of the states in the U.S. that have experienced a “surge” in COVID-19 cases - Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Arizona and California - are in fact double, triple, quadruple counting or more individual people multiple times, making the outbreak appear to be more severe than it probably is in reality.  This fact seems to have escaped the establishment theatrical news media, which is now mostly populated with journalists who have an entertainment background and no real investigative journalism training or experience.

   But, artificially high positive cases aren’t the only thing being skewed.  Negative tests are also double and triple counted depending on the outcome of a person’s multi-test results.  This makes those states appear to have a much higher negative test rate overall which will skew the infection rate artificially lower.  What this means is it will appear the outbreak of COVID-19 in those states has a lot further to go before enough of the population has been infected and thus developed an immunity to the virus.  When extrapolated to the whole population in order to determine the case fatality rate, that number will then be artificially higher than it really is because it will appear less people have been infected among the entire population than really are.

   In Maine, for example, a month into the outbreak, the infection rate was just north of 5%.  Today, at the end of July, that rate is dipping below 3%.  This makes it appear less people in the state’s population have been infected and thus when considering the total number of people who have allegedly died from COVID-19 the case fatality rate will be skewed artificially higher than it really is.

   COVID-19 has truly become a virus driven by politics and ultimately profit for the vaccine manufacturers who plan to get exceedingly rich when reaping the profit bonanza from any vaccine they produce to combat COVID-19, whether it works or not.

   The data on COVID-19 is still pretty “noisy” - as statisticians would say - and it may be years, if ever, before it gets cleaned up enough to know the actual truth about the case numbers, deaths, infection rate, etc. since politicians and their politically appointed quacks in their states’ respective CDC bureaucracies are doing such a horrible job of accurately, objectively and non-politically logging the data.

   As long as the skewed data continues to support draconian state lockdowns and other authoritarian dreams of those governors - and as long as effective therapies are suppressed in order to gin up support for a supposed vaccine - the numbers for COVID-19 will never correct themselves and governors will never relinquish their newfound control over their subjects.