Florida scientist fired for refusing to manipulate Covid-19 data
floridatoday.com
floridatoday.com
I think I've got a good guess what data she didn't want removed or changed, and it's not exactly good for her case. On May the 5th, they day she was removed from her position, there was an all-time high spike of 113 reported coronavirus deaths due to Florida reporting a bunch of old deaths all at once: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/15/florida-adds...
This did not represent an actual spike in deaths which had in reality been declining, but if I remember rightly some people did spin it as deaths increasing due to the lockdown being lifted. Deaths by date reported are conspicuously missing from the current version of the dashboard; it only has dates by date of death, which is far less favourable to the claim that lifting the lockdown is causing an increase in deaths.
Tracking deaths is actually the worst, most lagging indicator. It takes a very long time to die.
The most useful was the CDC tracking cases-by-illness-onset, that gave you a great understanding of what the trend line really looked like over the last couple of days.
Cases by onset date is pretty good too, but there is this period of some unknown number of days where it is misleading because it is too incomplete. The Colorado tracker shades ten days as "potentially unreported cases", but I always wonder how they chose ten and whether that's conservative or aggressive. The death by date of death has the benefit of not being incomplete in that way. Another problem I see with cases by onset date is that I don't really care that much about how many cases there are, not directly. If there were a huge number of cases, but no deaths, that would be a bummer because being sick sucks, but it would not justify our extreme reaction. What we care about are the deaths. So I like direct measures of that.
Cases by reported date doesn't seem very useful at all, for anything. Percent positive tests by day is a similar measure that seems more useful.
But I'm an amateur, this is just what I think is and isn't useful for reasoning about what's going on.
[0] https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-may-19-2020/down...
'Date of reporting of case' and 'date of onset of symptoms' are two different things, both useful.
The epi curve has the problem that it always looks like cases are declining because the most recent few days are 'not filled in yet' by cases that have been reported.
I don't think it's anti-scientific to report either way, so long as the dats is well represented.
- There's a one time spike when the methodology changes
= The data lags reality on the ground (true for both date-of-report and date-of-death)
+ Past dates aren't updated, so there isn't a continuous bias to show a slowdown in the number of new deaths
I think that the last point is the most important because it's super easy for people to misinterpret provisional data. People were talking about covid-19 not causing excess mortality because using date-of-death always shows a dip for the present: https://twitter.com/TylerMorganMe/status/1248452375162925057
You can also see the same thing in the top comment on this Euromomo thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22866238
> Another very surprising thing is to see no excess mortality in Sweden, a country criticized for a laxer strategy against COVID-19. I was not expecting to see that.
That was week 14 for https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ . In fact, week 14's excess death z-score for Sweden was in the "very high excess" category after the data was collected.
* They stopped graphing the per country raw numbers, which makes it impossible to put things in perspective: what is the comparative excess mortality per million people?
* They use deceptive graphs that do not start yaxis at zero
* They refuse to publish the raw dataset for independent processing.
This option is clearly better than publishing date of report as date of death, because doing that is inaccurate. The data is really from events a week or more ago when you think it's from today, and you can get clusters like this when many reports come in at once.
The disadvantage is that you then have newer data that isn't being published because it isn't completely in yet. But if you are going to publish incomplete data then it should still be date of death and the dates without full reporting should be annotated so that people understand that they're looking at incomplete data -- which they are, so it's very important for that to be understood.
Based on the animation I linked, it takes around 15 weeks for an apparent decrease in pneumonia deaths to rise to a normal number. 15 weeks ago was Feb 4. (Granted, pneumonia death data collection in normal times will be different than covid-specific data now). The numbers do get more accurate with time though. There is a trade-off between accuracy and timeliness.
I know the CDC has a good system for sharing infectious disease diagnoses (https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nndss). I don't know if there's a similar rapid-collection system for death records. We usually don't need to track deaths with this urgency.
A possible compromise is to model a delayed reporting factor. Not sure if there could be a good enough model, though.
Using date-of-death introduces a consistent bias where recent deaths are undercounted compared to earlier deaths. People care about whether deaths are currently slowing or increasing. Date-of-report may be inaccurate, but it doesn't bias the trajectory of deaths consistently in either direction.
1. The linked article in the comment reflects a clear understanding of the lag between occurrence and report dates, which points to the dashboard not having been in any kind of misleading state.
2. Even when a lot of politics is being played, it does not seem plausible that people were spinning deaths reported May 5 as being due to the May 4 reopening.
3. The "in reality had been declining" part fails to acknowledge the way reporting by occurrence date always makes graphs have a decline at the end (see rovolo's comment, sibling to mine)
You've got to be kidding. Here on Hacker News people were buying the very same sort of spin from an article about the 1918 flu epidemic and San Francisco (I think that was the city). I've seen lots of people on either "side" of this issue buy into absolutely outrageous claims that are clearly just spin.
For example, weeks ago somebody on the "open up now" side graphed the data from the CDC showing that deaths around the country weren't increasing, but in fact plummeting. The page with the data is explicit in multiple places that the data is incomplete for many weeks into the past. Then, weeks later I heard that the official death toll from Covid-19 had been cut by 50%. When I asked for a source, it was that same page with data that lags by up to 8 weeks.
Another example: somebody on the "panic now" side reported (in the news, IIRC) that Michigan's positive test ratio was skyrocketing and had reached 47%. The only table that contained positive vs negative test results clearly had not been reporting the negative tests at all. They should have just gone ahead and claimed that 100% of the tests in MI were positive, since that was what the table showed for the previous 5 days.
The fake news around Covid-19 has been driving me absolutely crazy on both sides.
It helps reduce verbiage.
Do you not agree that such lies are bad? Perhaps you think the end justifies the means, but in that case, you might want to consider what telling lies does to the public’s perception of your trustworthiness when you tell them it’s necessary to stay in lockdown.
And then there’s all the real reasons not to panic. Because hoarding is bad for everybody. Because failing to seek necessary medical care for your ruptured appendix because you’re afraid of getting Covid-19 as a 28-year old would be pretty bad. And on and on.
What possible good do the lies I described above accomplish?
It does not seem plausible that reasonable people would suggest suppressing data just because some people tried to spin deaths reported May 5 as being due to the May 4 reopening.
If information sources in either of the examples you gave were later suppressed due to the extreme spin put on them, please let me know.
For comparison, Australian testing rates (some of the best in the world) are around 0.5% to 1% in the week after the peak of cases.
First there is the assumption that you have to "pick a team", and that every voiced opinion also has done so.
Then there is the assumption that the voices from the far extremes of these sides are the ones worth listening to.
You are correct that it is preferable to report the raw data, but it is more than just "honest"! Even with that data `incorrectly` on the wrong day, when binned as a full month the growth rate will be correct. That is, the data is now more correct than if the late reported deaths were not included.
I believe this is effectively the same as Intention to Treat Analysis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention-to-treat_analysis).
If you want to reference what someone else (or you yourself) already posted, please do so with a link. Adding info about why you're linking to it is also welcome.
Edit: Actually it would be fine to quote from what you're linking to as well. This did lead to good discussion and I don't mean to interfere with that!
It is still illegal to invite 2 friends at the same time, for example.
Also, wearing face masks inside shops and in public is still mandatory.
Yes, the lockdown is gradually being weakened, but far from being over.
It is transparent, and you can find in official sources what is counted and what is not. But just looking at the global statistics, it is hard to know what's going on. We even have people "resurrecting".
The biggest reason for all this mess is that we combine data sources with different levels of reliability.
- Many things go unreported on week-ends and holidays. So we often see artificial spikes on Mondays, and Tuesdays.
- Hospital deaths are reliable but incomplete, and taken by themselves, with week-ends smoothed out, you see a rather smooth curve that makes sense.
- EMS/EHPAD (nursing homes) deaths are less reliable. Patients dying while showing symptoms are considered COVID-19 victims, even if not tested. It can be reverted at a later date. Reporting can take more time, and in fact wasn't considered at all during early statistics.
- People dying at home are not counted at all, too difficult to keep track of. We do have global mortality stats for all causes though.
- During the peak of the pandemic the testing policy was to test only if necessary for the health of the patient or medical personnel, not for statistical reasons. It means a lot of underreporting.
That's a common problem. I spent a while contracting with an insurance company a decade or so ago, and one of my fellow developers was tasked with coding an "un-decease person" feature. It was non-trivial.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/19/florida-heal...
So I guess "makomk" was wrong. And your admiration for his baseless speculation was also wrong.
I wonder what percentage of all HN posts, almost none of which receive such honours as being reposted by an admirer, manage this sort of trifecta of missing its prediction, never actually having a meaningful argument or mechanism for the prediction, and, by its own admission, smearing the person concerned with these unsubstantiated claims of lying and/or at least acting in bad faith.
>An epidemiologist, Dr. Carina Blackmore, was the one who contacted the IT director to make the change. Then the IT director contacted Rebekah Jones to actually implement the change and she threw a fit. There is nothing to suggest Dr. Blackmore is political or wanted to support reopening.
>https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/19/florida-heal...
>What Dr. Blackmore asked to be removed was a count of unconfirmed cases based on self-reported symptoms. They only wanted confirmed cases represented.
What did see do wrong, except wanting to keep the "truth" on the dashboard?
Please don't quote ops quotes for me, could also not find the comments or quotes in the article or /r/...
From the article posted above:
> she objected to the removal of records showing people had symptoms or positive tests before the cases were announced
There's been been accusations of government manipulation of perceived infection rates through under testing. More concrete data is arguably only an improvement if sufficient testing is being conducted.
The risk is that untested asymptomatic or presymptomatic cases can then exponentially spread back through the community.
I do wholeheartedly agree with a sibling comment that self-reported data should be clearly separated from actual confirmed cases.
https://www.businessinsider.com/small-percentage-americans-w...
No, I really don't. Tell me. Did she yell? Knock over a computer? What did she do? And then tell me which line of which news article supports that as a fair and charitable characterization. I don't know where that is coming from other than a commenter just asserting it. Meanwhile, as far as you are concerned, as long as you can close your eyes and picture what the fictional description of 'throwing a fit' looks like, that, rather than factual accuracy, is enough for you to accept the description.
And I don't see how 'charity goes both ways' has anything to do with anything, insofar as it's relevant to the characterization of Jones. It's not an answer or justification, it's a smoking crater of nothingness. Do you have anything else?
>
> She provided no further details.
We’re gonna need some more meat on this bone. The facts presented do not support the headline.
What? By this logic, it would be virtually impossible to fire anyone who was willing to lie about what was said behind closed doors. Not saying the person in the article is lying, but I hope we haven't devolved to a state where individuals can make claims about wrongful termination and just automatically be assumed to be telling the truth. We have courts of law and discovery processes and things like that.
99.999% (some huge number of 9's) of people are never punished for lying in court.
I asked the lawyer in a case we have what the consequences were for the other side getting caught lying to the judge... he just laughed. Nothing ever happens.
The most effective response is for the media to make a big deal about the possibility of censorship in the short term, and demand transparency from the state. If the state feels that their position is being misrepresented and there's no wrongdoing, they can make a public statement and correct the record.
I didn't see any mention of that accusation in the article. Is there another source somewhere that exposes these alleged intentions?
Sorry, evidence doesn't work that way, neither does good reasoning
Florida medical examiners were releasing coronavirus death data. The state made them stop.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medi...
Even the likes of Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, or Brazil seem to have realised either that it's better for them to be transparent, or that fudging the numbers is always going to come out in the end.
I'm somewhat certain such shenanigans are magnitudes worse for a state's image. New York is seen as unlucky, or maybe incompetent. Florida is corrupt. A failed state.
> What’s more, the health department has said it is only including Florida residents in its count, although after the Times’ report it began posting some data on non-resident deaths in feeds online.
> “By their own admission, they are not counting every Florida death,” Nelson said. “I’m surprised that they are ahead.”
It's possible that there really is fire here, but that's a textbook example of how not to blow the whistle and be seen as credible.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/19/florida-heal...
Considering that the last 2 years is full of whistle blowers that acted credibly and saw nothing happen, I doubt she cared about the larger optics. The data manger was probably more concerned with an immediate, clear response to users of the data.
It's different to be a whistle blower when you aren't sitting on a big savings account, other people's problems stop being a high priority.
For some reason, this statement strikes me as being cruel to someone who is willing to take a stand on moral principles. For someone to buck the orders, it takes a lot of courage and be able to stand up under pressure. There are no textbook examples of how to whistleblow and I think we owe these people who are willing to call out problems as they see it a more charitable hearing.
In this case, it sounds like they told her to make a change, she said she disagreed but made the change anyway. And then they fired her? For what? This just doesn't ring true.
The coverup idea doesn't make much sense either. Apparently the "deleted" data was minor detail that would be published in a day or two anyway. Is it even material? Would anyone even be looking at it, aside from this scandal? Also sounds off.
My guess is that (right or wrong), she was already on someone's shitlist, and this was the last straw. The "my successors will be liars" thing certainly wouldn't make me want to work with her.
There will be an investigation, as there should be. I suspect there's little or no fire.
In general, whistleblowers should be attended to, due consideration should be given to what they are risking.
But if you're going to do it, you need to build up a case and make it carefully and dispassionately, and above all maintain your professionalism. This reads more like a divorce proceeding.
Last time I checked, the whistleblower wasn't raving or cursing on the way out.
It sounds like you're just generally uncomfortable with questioning authority.
But it doesn’t mean she’s right, it just means she feels strongly about it.
Plus as someone else said, there have been plenty of whistleblowers this election cycle, all of whom were immediately claimed as being disgruntled workers, partisans etc no matter how professionally they tried to handle it. At a certain point we really need to start putting the burden of proof on the state and governmental agencies rather than playing defense for them.
They'll just manufacture proof.
“As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it,” she wrote.
What about the statement bothers you?
Life is short, and I don't get paid enough to deal with people like that.
And for what it’s worth, both of those accusations seem to have already played out as she expected. You can read more in comments in this thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23239014
[1] https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2020/05/18/censorshi...
Further context: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medi...
A spokesperson for the health department’s Hillsborough County office said a lag in reporting accounts for some of the difference. The health department is also excluding some snowbirds and other seasonal residents, along with visitors who died in Florida, from its count. The medical examiners are including anyone who died in Florida.
It's neither obvious nor candid if it is in fact misrepresentative.
To me it looks terrible. She was fired for doing something wrong and she's claiming that 'only she has the ability to do it well, the newcomers cannot' which is definitely problematic.
Given the details of what she was asked to do and did not do so ... I don't see the state acting in any way towards 'censoring' information, just a disagreement as to what and how information should be presented.
Trump is claiming that Flynn was 'unmasked' and that this was some kind of crime, when in fact Obama letting Trump know that Flynn is under investigation was exactly what we want him to do.
The state seems reasoned in their justification, I don't see how someone would be 'whisteblowing' here.
FYI the state also made the claim that this issue was persistent, it wasn't just this one thing, and that she made changes to the site without consulting with her team, or the epidemiologists supporting the initiative, which is not good.
It's hard to make a full conclusion but I don't think it looks very good for a whistleblowing case.
If there's something truly horrible going on, go find the best reporter you can and tell them your tale. If you want to make a difference, forsake fame, forsake glory, forsake vengeance, forsake righteousness. Become quiet death to the evil worth fighting.
I think you might have gotten a little carried away with your rhetoric there, that would mean keeping your job. ;) But this serves an important point, which is that vitriolic rhetoric can creep in even when the writer is a Hackernews commenter steeped in a culture of dry language and with no strong emotions or anything at stake. Filtering out information that comes along with vitriol is like filtering out any paragraph that uses the word "and" an even number of times.
> The Tampa Bay Times automatically checks for changes in the data and archives new updates. Shortly before 10:12 a.m on May 4., data still included the EventDate field, showing records with listed dates that people reported symptoms as early as January 1. By 3:02 p.m., the column was gone.
For much of the next day, May 5, the column was either missing or empty, with every row listing “None.” Finally, it returned shortly before 8:02 p.m.
Times reporters asked Health Department spokesman Alberto Moscoso that day why the data disappeared. Two days later, he said, “This field continues to be represented on the Department’s COVID-19 Dashboard.”
Moscoso did not reply to requests for comment Tuesday.
According to internal emails reviewed by the Times, Department of Health I.T. Director Craig Curry emailed Rebekah Jones just before 5 p.m. on May 5. He cited Dr. Carina Blackmore, director for the Division of Disease Control and Health Protection.
“Per Dr. Blackmore, disable the ability to export the data to files from the dashboard immediately. We need to ensure that dates (date fields) in all objects match their counterpart on the PDF line list published,” Curry wrote.
The tables in the PDF documents did not include the column of data showing when symptoms were first reported, only the “Case Date” — the date the state recorded and confirmed the case.
“This is the wrong call,” Jones replied minutes later.
A few minutes later, she emailed Curry again. “Case line data is down.”
Then, just after 6 p.m., the I.T. director emailed both Jones and Dr. Blackmore. “Re-enable for now please.”
Jones replied, “10-4.”
Neither Dr. Blackmore nor Curry replied to requests for comment.
If you know the Belgian story and the "big" amount of cases. Then you should know the country lists "suspected cases" as cases in every metric.
So while the number for Belgium looks a lot higher, since a lot of "other causes than COVID" are listed as cases in contrary to other countries.
We are one of the few that overestimate their cases, but we also don't need to verify the suspected cases as confirmed cases ( + put effort in that).
Probably every other country "undercounts" their cases.
This also led to the faulty conclusion of 'president T.' that Belgium is doing bad, informed observers would have known that is not correct to say :)
One of many references: https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/1064...
The irony that data is supposed to have more truth to it than narratives is not lost on me.
Regardless of the details of this example, it's scary how in the dark the public is for something that is insanely important to live and death.
She will not have a hard time finding further employment.
I highly doubt that.
Kinda funny how HN commenters decide that certain people’s perspectives need to be “steelmanned” but not others’
I am willing to believe 3 decades is enough to change a man. HNs response was also tempered by the fact that many posters are young, so when this man committed his crimes they were not even born.
Throw in the fact that he is Jewish and still joined the KKK, and you can see why some decided he was a deluded or tricked child who escaped the KKK clutches rather than someone who would continue to harbor self-hate for 3 decades, acting as a sleeper agent.
This case now, is about the present day. The researcher can’t claim that any faults are merely past transgressions she has moved beyond. Nor can anyone say they don’t understand the time period this is occurring in (as the time period is now).
Edit:
In the above I reference the KKK, but the CEO was actually a neo Nazi. Same hate. Different clothing.
This is a classic example of the notice-dislike bias that governs how people, especially those with strong views, perceive HN (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We notice what we dislike, and weight it heavily; we gloss over what we like; poof, bias.
The result is a generalization about HN that is invariably an inverted afterimage of your own preferences (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). And I do mean invariably; I'm not sure I've seen a single case, out of thousands, that violated this pattern.
Needless to say there's an endless litany of people making the opposite generalization about the HN community to the one that you are making (it's overrun by socialists, it's full of SJWs, it's extremely left-biased, blah blah blah). I've posted lists of those many times. Do you really think that they are wrong and you are right?
Here's a different way to look at it empirically. Can you, or anyone, find a single example of someone making a strong ideological generalization about HN that wasn't opposed to their own ideological preference? If my analysis is wrong, these shouldn't be hard to find, so let's start with an existence proof. I'm pretty sure I can find thousands of cases the other way around. If that's correct—thousands of cases exist on one side, close to zero on the other—it is surely evidence of something. I claim that it is evidence of a psychological mechanism, and not a weak one.
By the way, while I have you: would you please stop arguing in the flamewar style on HN? It's against the guidelines, it's destructive, and it's tedious. Snarky swipes like "or is that just a [fancy synonym for stupid]" destroy curious conversation and don't belong here. People do this when they're more interested in defeating enemies than in learning from each other, and this site is supposed to be for the latter, not the former.
You unfortunately do this a lot. In fact, the last time you asked me a question (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23018879) I had the same feeling: that it was not a genuine question but a cross-examination, almost of a "have you stopped beating your wife yet" sort. There's a reason why we added "Don't cross-examine" to the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
"Both sidesing" is another example. That's a reductionist label which doesn't reflect back to me how I actually see this problem at all. When you categorize what I'm saying that way, my felt sense is that you want to back me into a corner rhetorically, alongside a bunch of concepts I don't have, but which are easy to argue against. In other words, that you're advancing a step in a fight.
I don't enjoy this impression. I prefer the feeling that the person I'm talking with is curious to understand what I actually think and feel, and is interested in dropping any distorted perceptions they may have, rather than affixing them to me further.
Well, she got fired (for one reason or another). The more sympathetic the reason she can make people believe, the easier it will be to get the next job. Not saying she's lying, but there is a clear motive for her to do so here.
> she was fired because she was ordered to censor some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen."
> She provided no further details.
As for why she would lie and what she would gain, she'd gain notoriety and probably a big paycheck from the next company who hires 'a hero' standing up against corrupt government.
She gains the veneer of credibility after being fired for possibly not doing her job.
We have no idea if that's the case, but it's actually pretty easy to see how someone who is arguing with their managers over 'how to report' is then fired, and then makes some grandiose claims.
In her mind she might not even be lying when that could be the case. She believes she's being asked to 'censor' when maybe that's not the case.
We don't know, but we need to know exactly what she was asked to do and not before drawing conclusions.
That would be more helpful to really understand it. All we have is her characterization of what happened.
This does not support the whistleblower narrative, this seems like a front end/front line communications person disagreeing with a decision that is legitimately made by her seniors.
It's hard to tell exactly, but it seems reasonable to me that the board might not want to include such information, as it may be spotty, not consistently collected or reported, and frankly it may have no value to the public good.
The Canadian government, the Ontario/Quebec government, the CBC - nowhere do I see that level of reporting and nobody here is complaining about censorship and whistleblowing.
I think HN has jumped the gun her to assume the validity of this ostensible whistle-blowing action, and I suggest there's some nuance here and no obvious signs of malicious practice.
"As a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency that I made central to the process during the first two months. After all, my commitment to both is largely (arguably entirely) the reason I am no longer managing it,” [2] - this is kind of an arrogant assumption. What she should have done instead was made specific reference to the information, why it is important, highlighted the problems in the process and how we can be assured that it's addressed.
And there's this from the same article: “exhibited a repeated course of insubordination during her time with the Department, including her unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.” So it would seem the state is claiming there's some unprofessional behaviour her on her part, and the point about not consulting with the epidemiological team is particularly difficult.
[1] https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/19/florida-heal...
[2] https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/19/florida-heal...
Maybe she was fired for the reasons she claimed, but lets have some diligence at least in our representation and reading of the article, and respect the rules of this site.
That's not the way I read it.
I am guessing generally, there is less malice involved than people ascribe to these situations. We don't have all the facts or perspectives, so let's take things slowly, wait for more information to come out, and analyze the facts with the full picture in front of us. Jumping to outrage mode, which then becomes a hardened position we dig ourselves into, does not help us seek the truth.
> Completing each “cause of death worksheet” involves listing the “immediate cause” of death, the “underlying cause(s)” that initiated the events culminating with the immediate cause of death, and “(o)ther significant conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause.” These fields are completed based on the “best medical opinion” of the certifier.
Is not "overstating deaths ... to support their intent to retain strict restrictions". It's stating - as it would with _any other disease_ that the patient had other co-morbidities, just as if you had diabetes, or CHF, etc. It's not the exaggerated, grand standing hyperbole of "Patient in car accident had COVID-19, so COVID-19 was listed as the cause of death", which simply hasn't happened. "Contributing to death, but not the underlying cause, in the best medical opinion of the physician/ME".
In contrast, Florida has numerous documented instances of government interference with this (restricting coroners from reporting _any_ data, pressuring law firms related to the media filing FOI requests).
> In its May 8 response to the Freedom Foundation, DOH stated, “All of the deaths currently attributed to COVID-19 had a positive PCR (polymerise chain reaction) test at some point. A PCR test is required in order to classify something as a confirmed case.”
However various other sources now seemingly contradict the answer previously given, since they do count “presumptive” cases in mortality metrics after all:
> DOH’s “Preliminary Guidance for Reporting COVID-19 Deaths” provides: “Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death.” (emphasis in original)
> Another DOH COVID-19 fact sheet makes a distinction between “confirmed” cases of COVID-19 in which the patient tested positive and “probable” cases involving any of the following factors [...]
So either the initial response was false or the definitions of the metrics changed at some point. The reason this matters is because WA’s governor, Jay Inslee, has instituted the nation’s most strict restrictions, going well beyond what other cautious states like CA have implemented. For example he has banned fishing, hunting, residential construction, prevented rural areas from advancing in reopening phases, etc. Even as some restrictions (like closing all state parks or banning fishing) were reversed, Inslee continues to retain strange nonsensical bans on activities like camping. Certainly there is motive to make the numbers look worse to justify policy overreach or missteps, and it deserves scrutiny.
1. A death _must_ have a positive PCR in order to be _attributed_ to COVID-19. This does not mean that a positive PCR means that the death _will_ be attributed to COVID-19.
2. Documentation of co-morbidities is standard, be it for COVID-19, or any other disease, "where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death".
> The reason this matters is because WA’s governor, Jay Inslee, has instituted the nation’s most strict restrictions, going well beyond what other cautious states like CA have implemented. For example he has banned fishing, hunting, residential construction, prevented rural areas from advancing in reopening phases, etc. Even as some restrictions (like closing all state parks or banning fishing) were reversed, Inslee continues to retain strange nonsensical bans on activities like camping.
The entirety of Eastern Washington is in Phase 2 or eligible (and the decision to go to Phase 2 in Adams and Spokane County is on those Counties, not the State, who has said they're eligible), which allows fishing, hunting, construction and camping: https://q13fox.com/2020/05/19/10-more-counties-including-thu...
> “Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death.”
The phrasing "assumed to have caused" is key here and it suggests that at least some deaths were assumed to be COVID-caused even without explicit confirmation (via a PCR test). This means that this prior statement from the state was false:
> “All of the deaths currently attributed to COVID-19 had a positive PCR (polymerise chain reaction) test at some point. A PCR test is required in order to classify something as a confirmed case.”
If the standards for what counts as a COVID-death have changed to be more permissive, then that would have the effect of inflating mortality metrics. But either way the contradicting statements don't help with trust or confidence in their decision making.
As for your statement about Eastern Washington...
> The entirety of Eastern Washington is in Phase 2 or eligible
This literally just came out today. These counties have been asking for this variance for at least a couple weeks and have been rebuffed without any clear reason. Inslee's reopening plans and conferences have historically been vague (without clear metrics or goals) despite claims of being data driven and science based.
And then there's the question of why so many counties in central Washington are not given variances...
Not so much - while the _suggestion_ may be there, I grant you, it doesn't negate the PCR testing. "COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate" refers to co-morbidities, not (necessarily) cause of death. However, if COVID-19 _is_ considered the cause of death, it should a) be reported, and b) be confirmed by PCR testing.
I'll grant you that the wording may not be clear in inference (particularly read separately, and piecemeal). But one of these statements doesn't and hasn't "supplanted" the other. AND, not OR, in programming parlance.
My understanding of this comes from being involved at a practitioner level working with my County's Public Health, Medic One, and the state DOH. I'm not a physician, but I have been privy to these discussions.
> This literally just came out today. These counties have been asking for this variance for at least a couple weeks
From the article: "This includes Spokane, Adams, Thurston, Mason, Lewis, Clark, Kitsap, Clallam, San Juan and Island counties." With the exception of Spokane and Adams, all those Eastern counties were already in Phase 2.
It's widely regarded as the gold standard, but usually not available weeks or months later. And while it is very reliable, it is somewhat less precise, and therefore not useful to gain a nuanced picture of the disease's impact when there are few deaths.
I’m not saying that is definitely the case but I’m eagerly awaiting their response.
Withholding information on nursing home cases, interfering with media law firms, refusing coroners to release any information so far.
But now, apparently, "she's doing it wrong; we just want to make sure accurate and complete numbers get out to the public".
Fleeting suspicion, indeed.
I’m basing my suspension on the reported article, I’m not making any accusations. Though as has been reported, there have been issues where poor reporting of numbers (like reporting deaths by date reported instead of date of death), led to significantly distorted interpretations, which good data scientists would tell you that you need to avoid. This is similar to someone making a “technically true” graph with an offset origin to make it look like there is a huge relative difference between two columns. In that case how you make your visuals matter. And if someone tells you that you need to “manually change the origin to zero” and you won’t do it because your report suits your narrative, then that’s an issue. If it’s actually the case that she wanted to keep showing deaths by date reported instead of date of death because a spike appearing in the less acccurate report made it look like deaths spiked after opening up, then that’s a valid issue.
But again, this is all just speculation backing a suspicion and it will be interesting to see their response. Her report is extremely light on details and can’t really be described as whistleblowing as much as just someone venting personal frustrations online and making currenlty unbased accusations. That may change if she provides further details to back her claims of cause.
Which, by the way, it never was: the lies you imagine would have been easy and quick to expose. And the (completely imaginary!) smear of incompetence you came up with never really explained why she would feel the need for revenge? At least no more than any other story: maybe she was fired because she was madly in love with Governor? Maybe she accidentally killed her supervisor's dog?
Or, maybe, we should tend trust people. At least as long as any counter-narrative is less believable than 80s porn plots.
If you where told that you where no longer lead on a project at work and your reaction is to email the customers that “the new guys taking over will likely not serve you as well as I have” I expect you’d end up fired as well.