Well, if they shouldn't see any increase, then why were they closed in the first place? This is a part of the discussion to be had. Also, rather than talking about doubling, it is easier to look at trends. The 7 day rolling average is a very useful tool because it accounts for delays in reporting. Here is a good example from Nate Silver regarding Wisconsin from that earlier tweet I showed you:
That's going to depend on the state. Some didn't at all. Places like Utah, South Dakota, never had lockdown orders because they never even experienced 3 deaths a day--so there's nothing to be gleaned from status quo when they don't get worse. Places like Ohio are on the other end of the spectrum. But the 7-day rolling average for a lot of those places is flat and/or slightly trending up rather than going down and that's problematic because it hasn't been quite two weeks for a lot of them.
It is showing that easing lockdowns did not increase those 3 figures noticeably in the states that moved forward with easing. Again, the assumption this entire time has been that there will be a spike following lockdown easing and we did not see that. There could be other factors at play, but these 22 states all had the same result.
I don't agree that's been the assumption in all states and that's why I referenced flyover country. Social distancing is built in in a lot of those places. But that's why even Nate Silver points out that it's not great that they aren't seeing a decline. Also, you're much less likely to see a 'spike' when your state has minimal cases. Again, my beef with all this is what the tweet is either intentionally or unintentionally implying--that locking down was a waste of time based on what we're seeing in the above listed places when it's apples-to-oranges.
Easing does mean different things, but it is still easing. Why does that not provide us anything meaningful? We see that different states with different levels of easing all did not show a significant spike. It is not a case of a certain percentage of them, where outliers were thrown in or excluded to prove a point. Every single one of the states followed the same trend.
It's too broad, and it's a selection of states who 1. never had major issues in the first place, or 2. misrepresent their data, or 3. never had a lockdown or 4. had a lockdown and haven't 'released' hardly at all. What the heck is that sample supposed to tell us? And lumping together states that never had lockdown orders at all to states who have locked down and only released people back to work only in restrictive environments in the last little bit and saying the outcomes are the same is a massive correlation-doesn't-equal-causation issue. And I emphasize it's a 'selection,' didn't seem weird that they skipped over Alabama, who eased on April 30th, just as an example?
Alabama virus cases surge to new high as state reopens
This is absolutely not the opposite. Did you read the link?
At the same time, emails leaked to the Ekstrabladet newspaper showed how on March 20, new calculations showing that the reproduction number in Denmark was 2.1, considerably lower than the 2.6 previously estimated, were held back because they were "not desired politically"."
"In the email chain about the suppressed briefing note, Kåre Molbæk, Denmark's top epidemiologist, and Søren Brostrøm, head of the Danish Health Authority, both said they wanted to release the new number.
But Brostrøm told Molbæk that this would not be possible until the next week, when Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced the lockdown extension.
"I'm completely in agreement..." he said. "But this is not desired politically, and my understanding is that it can be annnounced on Monday at the earliest."
Ekstra Bladet pointed out that Frederiksen had used, and exaggerated, the 2.6 figure in a speech the previous week.
"If one person infects three others and they each infect three, then nine people are infected. And if the nine again infect three, then we are at nearly 30 infected," she said.
Using the 2.1 figure, the real final number would have been just 9.2 infected, a dramatic difference.
They were actively suppressing information to manufacture consent.
I just don't see why this tweet is shitty, much less as bad as the link I provided.
Wait, you're saying it's bad to suppress info and manipulate data to facilitate public policy?
Florida:
Woman who designed Florida's COVID-19 dashboard has been removed from her position
"Rebekah Jones said in an email to CBS12 News that her removal was "not voluntary" and that she was removed from her position because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen."
Nebraska:
Nebraska health officials stop reporting COVID-19 confirmations at meatpacking plants as case counts continue to rise
"As of the first week of May, public health officials reported 96 infections at the Tyson plant in Madison, 237 at the JBS plant in Grand Island, and 123 arising from the Smithfield plant in Crete.
Then, as the numbers continued to rise, the state stopped releasing them.
Gov. Pete Ricketts announced at a news conference last week that state health officials would no longer share how many workers have been infected at each plant. The plants weren't releasing the numbers either, and employees and their families were left in the dark, The Post reported."
Virginia:
How Virginia Juked Its COVID-19 Data
"The state is reporting viral tests and antibody tests in the same figure, even though the two types of test answer different questions about the pandemic and reveal different types of information. By combining these two types of test, the state is able to portray itself as having a more robust infrastructure for tracking and containing the coronavirus than it actually does. It can represent gains in testing that do not exist in reality, says Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard."
Georgia:
So yes, there is a data reporting and misrepresentation war going on and it's defnitely happening on both ends. For all the complaints about California's partisan 'bad projections,' there's not nearly enough criticism of others states' bad reporting, and much of it appears to be unfortunate bullshit political tribalism. If you don't see that, I'm not going to be able to help you see it.
