Yesterday, Florida COVID-19 case data were suddenly altered, including all past data.

[Towlie]

I just entered yesterday's reported number of cases in my running spreadsheet and was surprised to find that my calculated daily number of new cases, which up to now has always agreed with theirs, comes out to -5,798 (that is, minus 5,798). I compared my own recorded past data to their currently displayed data going all the way back to when I began keeping track last March, and found that all of it had been altered and now shows a lower number of total cases. They didn't just switch to a new way of determining the number of cases, they went back in time and changed the previous data!

I searched the web for an explanation and found it here and here, but so far The COVID Tracking Project says nothing about it. This change will make it more difficult to spot trends and construct meaningful graphs.

It feels a bit creepy to see this, especially for someone like me who has read 1984 by George Orwell. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

[Chainfire]

1. If Trump is reelected

within three months the virus will have never happened. Just like magic....

[Roland99]

2. Cases shouldn't have been altered. They removed the testing numbers section. Compare these two PDFs.

10/25
http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/cases-monitoring-and-pui-information/state-report/state_reports_20201025.pdf

10/27
http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/cases-monitoring-and-pui-information/state-report/state_reports_latest.pdf


Total tests are still available by going to the very bottom but what we did lose was the # of new persons tested. That is still available on the Dashboard, though:

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429
Florida Testing tab

BUT, we lose non-residents tested

[Roland99]

3. UPDATE - the data IS available but one has to do a bit of work now to get it. See this thread....

Link to tweet

I went here and went to Tabular view and changed columns to only T_negative and T_positive (click the litte '+' sign in the bottom-right corner and you can turn off all columns but those)

http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?url=https://services1.arcgis.com/CY1LXxl9zlJeBuRZ/ArcGIS/rest/services/Florida_COVID19_Cases_by_County_vw/FeatureServer/0&source=sd

I believe one will have to track those numbers daily and compare yesterday's numbers to the updated ones in the report the next day. That's only for % Positive for New Cases which, to me, is the more important indicator of how much the virus spreading to new people.


Alternatively, one can query the raw dataset (use an offset of 50 and go to the LAST row to see the new daily numbers for T_negative and T_positive)

https://services1.arcgis.com/CY1LXxl9zlJeBuRZ/ArcGIS/rest/services/Florida_COVID19_Cases/FeatureServer/0/query?where=1%3D1&objectIds=&time=&geometry=&geometryType=esriGeometryEnvelope&inSR=&spatialRel=esriSpatialRelIntersects&resultType=none&distance=0.0&units=esriSRUnit_Meter&returnGeodetic=false&outFields=T_negative%2C+T_positive&returnGeometry=true&returnCentroid=false&featureEncoding=esriDefault&multipatchOption=xyFootprint&maxAllowableOffset=&geometryPrecision=&outSR=&datumTransformation=&applyVCSProjection=false&returnIdsOnly=false&returnUniqueIdsOnly=false&returnCountOnly=false&returnExtentOnly=false&returnQueryGeometry=false&returnDistinctValues=false&cacheHint=false&orderByFields=T_negative%2C+T_positive&groupByFieldsForStatistics=&outStatistics=&having=&resultOffset=50&resultRecordCount=&returnZ=false&returnM=false&returnExceededLimitFeatures=true&quantizationParameters=&sqlFormat=none&f=html&token=

[Baitball Blogger]

5. Why are they making this harder for us?

[Roland99]

6. WAIT! there IS an easier place

Link to tweet

this link:
https://open-fdoh.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/florida-covid19-state-testing-totals/data?page=25

You'll have to adjust the last page # as days go by and more records are added to the dataset. That's the details of what I posted above in a better to read format

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Thanks for the explanation.

Yes, what they did was weird. But they gave us the total number of tests taken for that day and that number had increased by quite a bit. I suspect they are bracing for the higher number of positives.

[MineralMan]

7. If you don't like the data, manipulate the data.

Oldest trick in the book, really.

[Ms. Toad]

8. Just use the state-specific data at worldometers n/t