I have heard something that disturbs me, and I just had it corroborated by a Doctor. Doesn’t mean it’s true, your mileage may vary, etc… Friend of mine, his wife was in line to get a drive-by CoV test. They had given her a number (under the windshield wiper) and she was waiting. Two hours go by, sitting in her car in 90 degree weather, and she bails on the test, drives off. Two days later she gets a phone call stating that she has tested positive for Corona!
Wow. (She of course told them this was impossible, as she was never actually tested.) That the testing lab didn’t even notice that there was no matching test is… a little concerning, to say the least.
I had this sort of verified, sheepishly, by a Doctor friend of mine, who said, “yeah, this seems to be happening a lot.” Especially with the swap tests, I manged to also get out him.
I’m not going to draw this out any further; I think the rest is pretty obvious here, except to say:
When numbers are reported, what sort of test(s) were used to gather that data? Why are the numbers not reported per type of test, along with the known (so far) error rate on those tests? Was it blood / antigen test or the quickie swab, or was it simply based on symptoms, without a test [yes: that’s been going, too]? The swab test has been reported to read positive on an ordinary cold; I don’t know if that’s true or not.
Numbers can not simply be stated as “9 out of 1,000 test positive,” or some such. The margin of error must also be stated or the number has NO MEANING. For example, “5 out of 1,000 plus or minus 2, on using Test A, and 2 out of 1,000 plus or minus 1 when using test B.” Just for example. Plain, bald numbers are just not that meaningful, you know? But plain bald numbers sell more newspapers than do True Facts properly reported. As Robert Heinlein (and many others) have said: “there are Lies, D**n Lies, and Statistics,” but that is true only when statistics are improperly handled (much of the time, unfortunately).
When a “corona related death” is reported, what was the actual cause of death (COD)? I know of at least one case where the actual COD was a traffic collision, yet it was reported as Corona-related, no explanation why. One assumes the corpse tested positive for CoV, but that’s only an inference as the report did not say.
Are there reasons to exaggerate the numbers? I’m not going to suggest any; we all have Great Imaginariums and can up with all sorts of fictional ideas. Might any of them be true, is the question.
Watch the data — what the media and your county and state leaders are NOT saying speaks at least as loudly than what they are saying.
Just some thoughts…