Monday, July 20, 2020

Monday Covid Rant

Let me start with a disclaimer:  Covid 19 is a highly infectious disease that is capable of killing people. We should do what we can to limit the spread. End of disclaimer.

On The Numbers

Having said that, can we trust what the governor is telling us?  According to the Louisiana Dept of Health Covid dashboard, the numbers currently stand as listed.

As of July 19, 2020.  Update every day at noon.
According to the Census bureau, Louisiana currently has approximately 4.6 million residents.  According to the photo above, Louisiana has conducted 1.069 million tests.  That would lead us to believe that nearly one-in-four Louisianans have been tested.  That's not right, because some people are tested multiple times.  Many employers requite a negative test to return to work.

Red River Parish, a small rural parish in north Louisiana questioned the numbers they were seeing, and did an audit of the numbers.  Red River is a small, rural parish in northwest Louisiana.  Everybody knows everybody.  The numbers didn't make sense.
Red River Parish was being told by the Louisiana Department of Health that they had 96 positive cases...but that wasn't really the case. According to a post on the Red River Parish Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness social media, the number was actually 58. The cases were 40% lower than what the LDH had told Red River Parish. So where were did the other 38 cases come from?
During investigation into the numbers, Red River Parish found that the cases being counted by the Louisiana Department of Health weren't actually being done by patient, but by test. Which means what? That means, according to Red River Parish, the same person who had one positive test could end up accounting for 3-4 positive tests. As they explain, once a person tests positive, they will take additional tests to show when they are no longer ill. If those follow up tests still show the patient is testing positive, it just counts as a new positive test, not that it was the same person.
So, LDH is counting positive tests, not actual patients.  Red River Parish is a small rural parish and the numbers were easy to audit.  They found that their parish numbers were inflated by 40%, then we have to ask what that means for the numbers statewide?  We'll never know, but we have reasons not to trust the numbers that LDH is showing us.  They've proven to be wildly inflated in one small parish.

On The Mask Mandate

Louisiana is currently under a mask mandate.  The Governor and the CDC claim that if we would all wear masks, we could end this crisis in a matter of weeks.  I doubt that, they haven't been right about anything yet.  In the beginning of this exercise, they told us that masks were unnecessary.  Now, they are essential.  If the science were exact, the messaging would be consistent.  It's not, and it hasn't been since the beginning.  It seems to most of us that the experts are winging it.  They don't have a clue.

I wear a mask when I need to, and I believe that any property owner has a right to set conditions for entry.  If a business requires a mask, I wear it as a matter of convenience and a matter of civility.  PawPaw is never rude accidentally.  This graphic pretty much sums up my attitude on masks.




I believe that a business owner absolutely has a right to require a mask to enter, but I also believe that a government mandate is an over-step.  The governor may have the right to require a mask , but it doesn't make it right for him to require a mask.  If a business requires it, I have an option not to participate, and leave the premises.  When the Governor orders it, it rankles me, especially when we can't trust the numbers.

In Conclusion

If the Governor wants us to believe that we are in a crisis, he needs to be utterly transparent with the evidence.  As of this writing, the numbers are simply not to be trusted.  If the Governor is relying on these numbers, he's either misleading us, or simply stupid. Either way, he needs to fix it.

3 comments:

juvat said...

Excellent post. The only comment I have is your statement about the Governor either misleading the public or being stupid. My recommendation would be to use the word AND in the sentence.

Fred said...

I am not sure how to say what i wish to say, in that i disagree with you that a business can keep you out if you don't wear a mask. I wish I was more eloquent.

Termite said...

I'll just leave this here: https://americanmind.org/essays/the-covid-coup/