Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Continues to Grow ?


Do newspaper readers tend to read the entire article or just the headline ? I would venture to say that most read more than just the headline, but I seriously doubt whether those that write in the newspapers think that the populace reads much more than that first line.

In today’s paper there was yet another story on the “coronavirus pandemic page.” What I found interesting was that the first line is not what the gist of the article actually says.

The first line reads:

“The county health department announced 120 more Covid-19 cases and three additional deaths as the local novel coronavirus pandemic continued to grow steadily throughout the region.”  (Additional deaths!, Continues to grow! – OMG, this sounds bad!)

However, when the entire article is read, as opposed to the doom and gloom of that first line, the news is actually pretty good. (“there was no significant spike in overall numbers” . . . that sounds good! ; “hospitalizations ticked down a bit” . . . that sounds good! ; “intensive care activity remained flat” . . . not great, but certainly not a bad thing!) 

And the good news continued in this same article: the post election test rate for the county remained steady at 3% of tests performed, the overall hospital occupancy rate remained steady at 65%, well below the critical 80% that would trigger action. 

There are an average of over 5,000 tests performed daily. All told 237,000 Covid tests have been performed on San Diego County residents. It seems to me that it is no surprise that with all of tests being done, more positives are showing up, and with hospitalizations down a bit, logic dictates that these tests are picking up asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases. 

Indeed, isn’t this good news?

The three individuals who died were 80, 92, and 68 years old, all with underlying medical conditions. I feel bad for everyone who has died, but 80 years and 92 years are above the average life expectancy. 

So far the median age of those that have died is 78, meaning that half of those who have died have been older than 78. These are both encouraging stats for those of us in the general population especially when the percent of those deaths that have been in nursing homes is spelled out.

So why the ominous first line?

In truth shouldn’t a better first line be:

“Good news – with testing more asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic Covid cases are being picked up, while hospitalizations are creeping down.”

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