Garbage In

Garbage out.

The clouds may be beginning to part on the recent spike in coronavirus cases ... without the concomitant spike in virus deaths ... particularly in Florida and the Southwest. It seems that there may be some funny business in how these numbers are being collected ... at least in Florida ... and possibly elsewhere. Before we delve into this analysis, dear reader, you need to first read what crack bit of real reporting started this whole onion-peeling ... see: Florida Expose.

So, at least 36 virus-testing labs in Florida have been reporting jiggered results ... 22 of which have indicated that 100% of the tests they performed came back positive ... impossible! ... and 14 of which are highly suspicious. To say that such result are unusual and likely political is an obvious conclusion.

Let us now move into the analysis part. If one assumes that Florida’s overall positive test results would have been 10% (was 12.5%) and each lab tested on average 50 people (needs further clarification), then the labs reporting 100% positive results likely overstate virus cases by 45@ ... and 45x22 is 990 false positives. Add 280 as a rough guess from the obviously inflated results,  produces an overall false positive reading of 1,270 IN ONE DAY ... a significant overstatement.

My guess is that the real overstatement, given the visible evidence, is a whole lot higher ... one reason that new virus deaths did not follow new virus cases as would have been expected.

Are these same data collection shenanigans taking place in Texas, Arizona and California? Probably ... augmented by a cross-border flow of real cases of Mexicans and American ex-pats, since Mexico is experiencing a real surge.

I have no idea if there is a law against such data manipulation ... but there should be. And the Trump administration and the governors of all states experiencing a spike in cases should investigate this possible political malfeasance further. (And see if the virus death numbers are also now being tinkered with.)