Texas is hiding negative test numbers (hiding data)

[JCMach1]

Yet another state has begun hiding crucial data for the re-opening process:

DSHS recently informed county health departments that NEDSS will no longer share negative test results, so that county health departments can focus on managing positive cases. As a result, the quantity of negative test results will decrease substantially.

https://princetonherald.com/2020/05/23/collin-county-lists-5-new-covid-19-cases/

I don't know if this has been widely reported yet... Just a nugget picked from the local paper daily Covid-19 report.

[Shell_Seas]

1. The things they are doing are absolutely nefarious

And here, too. https://livingbluetx.com/2020/05/texas-just-told-counties-to-stop-reporting-their-coronavirus-numbers/

[Thomas Hurt]

2. Rolling the dice this won't explode into something they can't hide.

Overwhelmed hospitals, mass graves, no one to pick up the bodies in people's homes.

Placing the ideological bet.

[UTUSN]

3. K&R

[Hoyt]

4. Never hurts to have more data, but not sure negative test results help county health departments.

[JCMach1]

5. % POS is one of the measures of opening. You can't get that stat

Without knowing the number of tests conducted.

This is a very sneaky way of hiding the numbers.

[Hoyt]

9. I guess if one wants to calculate that ratio. I wouldn't use it because most of the testing

to date has required symptoms. So, it really doesn't mean much. If I were concerned about how the disease it progressing in my area, I'd be more interested in hospitalizations and deaths.

Second, as this national article explains -- negative test reporting varies among states and is not consistent because of the number of entities reporting.

No reporting standards

"Once there is a test result, the process of transmitting data to make that test part of the official stats isn’t always an easy one. Coronavirus is categorized as an infectious disease, meaning that all labs have to report the result of positive tests directly to their state health department. But negative tests do not always have to be counted — that depends on the state’s legislation — and most states did not report this number months into the epidemic.

"“Many states started to bring in other types of testing: largely commercial, but also hospitals, universities, et cetera,” said Alexis Madrigal, staff writer at The Atlantic and founder of the COVID Tracking Project, which manually tracks Covid-19 numbers in the U.S. “For a time, not every single test result was recorded, and primarily what we were missing were negative tests results. Positives, you have to report. But not everyone’s reporting negatives.”

"States now report negative tests either as their own metric, or report the total number of tests conducted, meaning that negatives are then calculated by the COVID Tracking Project as total cases minus positive cases.

"All in all, information made available by state health departments has been more timely and complete than information coming from the CDC, especially from a testing perspective, for which the CDC only offers a national aggregate not counting private labs. However, there is no overall standard when it comes to the information that has to be made public at the state level, which has led to a large variation in data quality across the country."

https://www.citylab.com/life/2020/05/coronavirus-data-positive-tests-deaths-covid-19-stats/610306/


Point I'm making is that I don't think this is some great conspiracy to hide the continuing impact of coronavirus.

[uponit7771]

10. It means a lot, means they're testing past symptomatic into a sentinel position. (link)

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/14/21257264/coronavirus-testing-positive-rate-covid-reopen-usa

With testing, most states now fall below the 10 percent positive rate. But when it comes to reaching the positive rate seen in, say, South Korea or New Zealand, just six states — Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming — have rates below 2 percent over the week of May 5.

[Igel]

6. What's NEDSS?

That would be important information here, since NEDSS is the thing no longer sharing negative test results.

Note: Collin County’s health department receives daily COVID-19 test results – positive and negative – from physicians’ offices, private labs, hospitals and the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS) through Texas’ Department of State Health Services (DSHS). We share this information with the public the same day it is received.

So it's a national-level thing that's ceasing sharing. Not a Texas-level thing.

Next question: Where's the focus? Is the data still being shared in some way that matters, just not through the Texas DSHS to counties?

Don't know. https://www.cdc.gov/nbs/index.html is the NEDSS site--it's part of the CDC. If you want to fix your claim and see if the information is being used or is entirely squelched you can spend a couple of minutes rummaging. I'm going back to dinner and then reading some more Kentukis.

[Andy823]

7. Texas, Florida, Georgia

And many other red states. It's to please their lord and master, little lord trump. It's pretty obvious that these states are doing what trump wants them to do, and that trump has been behind all the BS about opening up the states with his protesters.

The deaths are on trump, period! They can lie all the want, the truth will come out.

[JCMach1]

8. When they started reopening Gov. Abbott pushed

POS % as a key metric. Now, they are hiding it.

Does that tell you anything?


Abbott is smart evil... Unlike the peeps is DC

[Chainfire]

11. Why wouldn't they fudge the numbers?

It is good for them politically and they don't give a rat's ass about the people.