One
of the more entertaining or debilitating aspects of following the present news
is that one can find a statistic to support every argument. Sometimes, the numbers flying past ducked
heads are unreliable, inaccurate, false.
This is not necessarily an issue of bad faith. For example:
WEST PALM BEACH,
Fla. — The positivity rate of COVID-19 tests is a key metric for understanding
how the virus is spreading, and how prevalent infections are in the community.
The Florida
Department of Health reports the positivity rate of coronavirus tests each day
-- which is supposed to show the number of positive tests compared to the
number of total tests.
This week, the
accuracy of the state's positivity reporting has come into question.
A review of state
data shows many small, private labs have been reporting only their positive
results to the state -- skewing the positivity rate higher.
Even after this
issue came to light earlier this week, several dozen labs are still reporting
100% positivity rates, according to a review of Friday’s DOH data.
…
While Dr. Cole
said the small labs reporting 100 percent positive tests are not likely to
affect the overall state positivity rate in a huge way, it still undermines
trust in the numbers.
“When you lose the
confidence of the people, it ruins your message,” he said. “It’s very dangerous
when the people don't trust what the government is telling them. It’s just a
hot mess.”
No
kidding?
In all likelihood, there’s some sort of communication error going on here—some data entry peon (that’s not a slam; that used to be me) got a confused and confusing email from her boss (I’ve had these bosses) that did not make it clear she was supposed to enter ALL the test results.
But the result is that the state’s overall results are skewed—abiet “not likely … in a huge way.”
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