Selective coronavirus reporting creates confusion

As time passes we become aware of more and more “oddities” related to the coronavirus pandemic. Cutting appropriate slack for the doctors and other healthcare authorities who advised President Donald Trump and the nation on how to respond to the crisis, it was a new virus and little was known about it. We can hardly get huffy about the mistakes made early on, and to some extent, even those that persist.

Even so, dramatic mistakes were made, and playing Monday morning quarterback shows that the reactions were — and are — over-the-top, and quite harmful, in many instances.

The shutdowns closed thousands of businesses, many permanently, put tens of millions of people out of work, and contributed to deaths and other health problems not directly related to COVID-19, as elective surgeries were cancelled, and needed appointments were cancelled by people afraid to go to see a doctor, or who were afraid to go to the hospital when they were ill.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 48 percent of Americans said they or a family member canceled or delayed medical care because of the pandemic, and 11 percent said the person’s condition worsened as a result of the delayed care. Some died.

We have problems with the reporting of COVID-19 data. Media reports focus on “cases” and “deaths,” to the near exclusion of negative tests and recoveries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rules allow people who die “with” the virus to be counted along with those who die “because of” the virus, expanding the number of deaths attributed to the virus by some unknown amount.

Furthermore, according to the CDC, a positive test allows for the chance that antibodies from a virus in the same family of viruses as COVID-19, like the common cold, were found. And, if a person tests positive for the virus, and is tested periodically to determine when he/she is no longer positive, each of those positive tests goes into the positive test count until the person tests negative. How many of the positive tests result from this repeat testing practice?

A virus test that is positive is called a “case.” That implies to many people that each “case” is an illness, that people who test positive are sick. But many who test positive experience only mild symptoms, or no symptoms whatsoever.

And then, there is this: The Florida Department of Health released its daily coronavirus testing report on July 14 showing a statewide positivity rate of 11 percent. But WOFL-TV (FOX 35) in Orlando reported, “Countless labs have reported a 100 percent positivity rate, meaning every single person tested was positive.

“Other labs had very high positivity rates. FOX 35 News found that testing sites like one local Centra Care reported that 83 people were tested and all tested positive. Then, NCF Diagnostics in Alachua reported 88 percent of tests were positive. How could that be?”

An investigation into these hard-to-believe results showed that Orlando Health’s 98 percent positivity rate was wrong. When the station contacted the hospital, it corrected the positivity rate to only 9.4 percent.

Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center reported a positivity rate of 76 percent. But, again, a spokesperson for the Medical Center told FOX 35 News that the positivity rate for the Center is actually 6 percent.

How often do such “errors” occur?

Florida, of course, has seen dramatic increases in actual positive tests, but on the positive side, the state’s nation-leading increase in positive tests is not matched by a nation-leading increase in deaths, so far.

One Florida death was a man in his 20s who died in a motorcycle accident, but was classified as a COVID death. FOX 35 News received a statement from the Florida Department of Health attempting to clarify how a "COVID death" is determined. If, "COVID19 is listed as the immediate or underlying cause of death, or listed as one of the significant conditions contributing to death. Or, if there is a confirmed COVID-19 infection from a lab test – and the cause of death doesn’t meet exclusion criteria – like trauma, suicide, homicide, overdose, motor-vehicle accident, etc."

Despite the latter point, this death was classified as a COVID death.

Here are some relevant data from covidtracking.com as of July 19, 2020. The overwhelming majority of data comes from local or state/territorial public health authorities:

Total tests = 44,968,536

Positive tests = 3,962,061

Negative tests = 41,273,443

Test results pending = 3,032

Total hospitalized = 276,439

Total deaths = 132,395

These data show that only 8.3 percent of total tests are positive; that only 7.5 percent of those testing positive become hospitalized; that 3.6 percent of those testing positive succumb to the virus.

Also, fewer than half of those hospitalized — 7.5 percent of those testing positive — succumb to the disease, and 96.4 percent of those testing positive survive.

The selective choosing of which data to report can — and does — create a particular response: fear.

It would be far better — and far more responsible — to report the whole range of data so that the public will have a broad set of data on which to base its reaction.

Fear, questions and rumors complicate the coronavirus situation

The thought of being infected by the COVID-19 virus is truly scary. The numbers are big. On Monday, the number of Americans infected was 337,933, and the number of Americans who have succumbed to the disease was 9,653. The number of deaths after the virus has run its course is predicted to be 200,000 or more, according to some models.

A new model predicts coronavirus deaths will peak in the United States on April 16, though the research is a preprint, which means it has not yet been peer reviewed. The peer review process is a vital part of assessing new medical research and identifies weaknesses in its assumptions, methods and conclusions. This prediction could very well change.

Accompanying the actual news about the virus are rumors about the pandemic. One says it did not come from a wet market in Wuhan, China as is commonly believed, but from a biological laboratory located there. Another said that the lab developed the virus and purposely released it as a biological weapon against China’s enemies.

In another storyline, a guy claiming to have been employed in a management position in a high-tech firm, and therefore possessing special “inside” information, said that the pandemic isn’t a virus at all, but the effects of radiation poisoning from 5G technology. And it’s all part of a plot by a select few individuals who are determined to wipe out much of human life and take control of Earth.

If the latter theory were true, we might as well go back to work and forget about social distancing and hand-washing; we are all at great risk from 5G, no matter what we do.

As the coronavirus rages, we don’t need bright, happy fairy tales. We also don’t need dark, misery-laced horror stories. We need factual information, the good and the bad, absent emotional baggage. On this point, both President Donald Trump and the news media need to sharpen up.

Trump often puts things in a good light, sometimes in words that are much too positive. Embellishing is a common practice among people trying to persuade. The media, on the other hand, often reports things with a negative tone, frequently more negative than reality requires.

When Trump speaks in traditional Trump-speak, the media accuses him of lying. When the media accuses Trump of lying, he accuses the media of “fake news.”

The news business involves telling people the facts of a story. Report what Trump said, his actual words. Don’t tell us what some reporter or editor thinks he meant. If his meaning is unclear, ask for clarification.

An example, cited in a previous column: Trump said, “And this is their new hoax,” referring to the way Democrats were treating the administration’s response to the virus. This statement was misreported in reports from several respected media sources as Trump calling the virus a hoax. Is that incompetence, or politics?

Our lives have been substantially affected by COVID-19.  The tragedy and pain of suffering and death from it are enormous. And fear is at epidemic levels. Our lives have been turned upside-down, with businesses and schools closed, jobs lost and people told to stay home.

However, some more positive aspects of the pandemic can give some relief to the sometimes-overwhelming negative aspects. While America has recorded 9,653 deaths as of Monday, 17,582 infected people had recovered. And that does not count those who didn’t know they were infected and suffered no symptoms.

And the roughly 338,000 Americans who had been confirmed as infected as of yesterday is only about one percent of the nation’s 330,000,000 total residents.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) produced a model of the virus, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This model has been widely cited as what to expect.

Writing for Townhall.com, Derek Hunter looked at the model’s projections compared to reality. He wrote, “While the reporting data from some states are lagging, others have provided information that calls into question the validity of the whole model, and with it, all the actions taken by government.”

Citing the IHME model he noted that on April 4th, from 120,963 to 203,436 Americans would require hospitalization, but only 18,998 actually were hospitalized.

Given that not all states had reported complete statistics when the count was taken, Hunter notes that those whose report was incomplete were smaller states with less serious effects. Therefore, even if the reported number was doubled, it was still far below the projection.

Models are informed guesses based upon a data set. The problem is which one is selected, and how much damage will be done if it turns out to be the wrong.

As of April 6, worldometer.info reported the following worldwide statistics: Of the 1,287,284 confirmed cases, 70,540, or 5.5 percent of the total, have died; and 271,950, or 21.1 percent, recovered or were discharged.

In the U.S. there are as of yesterday 337,933 identified positive cases, according to dailyrecord.com, and 9,653, or 2.9 percent have died, and 17,582, or 5.2 percent have recovered.

This isn’t good news, but it demonstrates that reality isn’t as bad as we may think.