Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Purposely Confusing ?

The pundits are all opining on the latest stats concerning the coronavirus, etcetera. At this point, the best that I can tell is . . . no one really knows anything for sure! Everyday there are various updates on various stats for various parts of the country as well as various parts of a state, as well as various parts of a county, as well as various parts of a city, etc . . . next, I wouldn’t be surprised if the incidence of coronavirus cases was broken down by street! 

But, none of these stats really tell us the real story, as anyone can dissect these stats and come up with conclusions that suit their individual purpose. Sometimes I wonder if the reporting of these stats are meant to be purposely confusing!

Here in San Diego, I am convinced that it is the goal of the local “newspaper” to paint as bleak a scenario as possible, whatever the statistics !
Why ? I have my thoughts on this also, but let’s go back to the statistics issue.

What do we actually know for sure . . . not what does Dr. Fauci say, but what do we know for sure?

For sure we know that the number of tests for the virus have gone up dramatically. However, what we do not know is who are getting these tests. Are those with symptoms of some sort getting most of these tests? Are those who are uber afraid getting repeatedly tested because they are continuing to turn up negative? Are any children getting tested? Are those in nursing homes getting randomly tested?

We do know that the virus affects children much differently than it does adults. Is that because children have little if any predisposing conditions? Is it because the coronaviruses (in general, not Covid-19) are a common cause of the common cold, which children get a lot?

We know for sure that in California a very significant percent of the cases are in L.A.County. Why is that ? . . . No, se! 

We also know that a high percent of the cases in San Diego County are in the South Bay. Why is that? . . . no se,tambien.

We can track the death rates and the number of positive cases on a daily basis. The death rate, although there are minor ups and downs, is remaining fairly steady, while the  number of cases is going up. 

To me logically, this can only mean a few things:

-Could it be that the virus is now less deadly?  … Although anything is possible, this is extremely unlikely, as people are still dying.

-Could it be that with the increased testing an increased number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic individuals are now being picked up. Why, however did these individuals get tested? Probably, either because they had some sort of symptoms,(e.g. runny nose, ear ache, etc.) not related to covid at all, or they were identified by some sort of contact tracing. These sorts of individuals have the virus (+test), but are not going to die, and so will not contribute to the death rate.

So with the cases up and the deaths not up, this could be reported in one of two ways …either “number of cases has increased” or “death toll not increasing.” The way that a newspaper would report this would depend on whether it wanted to sell more papers! Guess which way the newspaper in San Diego will report this 90% of the time?!

Perhaps, President Trump wasn’t so far off when he suggested that perhaps we should be doing less testing! (Could less testing lead to less hysteria?)

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