Leadership so bad that even Trump does not support you anymore... Trump Breaks With DeSantis, Says Florida In A ‘Tough Position’ As ICUs Run Out Of Space https://www.forbes.com/sites/nichol...sition-as-icus-run-out-of-space/#2884af716b43 President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Florida is a state with a “tough” coronavirus problem, in a sharp contrast with Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who continued to paint a rosy picture of the state’s coronavirus crisis Tuesday, saying Florida is “going in a good direction” just hours after the state reported its highest-ever coronavirus hospitalization increase. Trump identified Florida, which is now his home state and where he plans to accept the Republican nomination next month, as a state that is in a “big tough position” when it comes to coronavirus. Despite essentially all evidence suggesting otherwise, DeSantis has continually downplayed the severity of the coronavirus outbreak in the state during press briefings. There are now 53 ICUs in Florida that are reporting 0% capacity, according to the state, which set a record for new hospitalizations Tuesday with 517. Deaths have also spiked in the state, which reached a new daily high of 156 last Thursday. Florida is clearly the U.S. coronavirus epicenter and has been for weeks, averaging over 10,000 new cases a day through much of July, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, including a national record high of 15,300 new cases on July 12. (More at above url)
Also depends on what you define as a trend, just like in stock trading. Looking at the big picture the trend is up. We can look at April to July - UPTREND. We can look at the last 2 weeks and say DOWNTREND. So it is meaningless to really call out trends but overall the cases did explode in June/July Rather than focus on the past week he needs to think bigger picture here and this should help. The real question is look at two states below Virginia and New Jersey. The question is whether Florida following the first or second graph curve. In the 2d graph New Jersey had a spike and huge surge with small down trends (which is why it is stupid to focus on trend in a week) and then got it under control after 2 MONTHS after CDC measures and absorbing cases. They got hit early and hard and got it down lower after 2.5 long months actually. In the 1st graph, VA had small surge for a month and got it under control and then a major surge a month later which thankfully seems to have been controlled quickly with CDC measures. GRANTED VAs numbers are 1/10th that of NJ but the curve shapes are what I am focusing on. Desantis is stupid to start crowing about anything yet because he does not knwo for sure which state he is going to emulate. HIS ONLY JOB now is to figure out how to get the new cases down quickly so it can level out downwards like in NJ and avoid VA like shape which would hit in September when school is in full blast. Desantis is not looking at the statistics and tendencies and being smart right now until he knows where he is in the curve.
Wonder why Florida became the world epicenter for coronavirus. You would think that an effective governor would takes steps to control this... Florida has fewest restrictions on child care and workplace temp screening in US, report says https://www.wfla.com/news/by-the-nu...d-workplace-temp-screening-in-us-report-says/ Florida has the least amount of COVID-19 restrictions among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, a new report found. In a recently-released study, Wallethub researchers explored 18 relevant metrics of coronavirus-related restrictions. The restrictions included mask requirements, travel restrictions, school reopening plans and the reopening of bars and restaurants, among other things. In two key categories — workplace temperature screenings and reopening of child care facilities— Florida ranked No. 1, meaning it had the least restrictions. Florida is currently among a handful of states without so much as a recommendation for workplace temperature screenings, let alone a requirement. Florida child care facilities, which are private institutions that have been following the lead of the Florida Department of Health, have remained open throughout the pandemic. Gov. Ron DeSantis stated in March that closure of those facilities could cause more of a burden on parents. “I have not had the public health people come to me and say, you need to do this to protect public health,” DeSantis said. “That’s just not something that’s been presented to me as being, as something that would be necessary at this point, and I also think it would create a huge amount of issues.” (More about Florida's leadership failures at above url)
"DeSantis for the win" Gov. DeSantis hides no-bid COVID contracts from public in defiance of state law https://www.floridabulldog.org/2020/06/gov-desantis-hides-no-bid-covid-contracts-defies-state-law/ The DeSantis administration has been hurriedly handing out hundreds of no-bid COVID-19 related state contracts worth tens of millions of dollars while flouting contract transparency laws and stonewalling public records requests. Since May 1, Florida Bulldog has asked the state for copies of a selection of some of the most notable no-bid COVID-19 contracts – including one they gave to a confessed thief and others given to companies tied to political contributions supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s election – but none has been released. That’s despite a Florida law that requires state agencies, including the Executive Office of the Governor, to publicly post electronic copies of all contracts “within 30 calendar days after executing a contract.” The Transparency Florida Act, with overwhelming bipartisan support, established the state’s online contract tracking database and also required disclosure of other basic information about government contracts. Florida Bulldog repeatedly has asked the governor’s top staff and Division of Emergency Management deputy general counsel Erik Sayler to explain why the administration has not posted the COVID-19 contracts in accordance with state law. No one would explain. Meanwhile, the Division of Emergency Management has yet to provide a single requested contract, despite assurances more than a month ago from division director Jared Moskowitz that at least one of the contracts would be coming soon. Gov. Desantis’s transparency issues The administration’s transparency issues when it comes to dealing with the pandemic extend beyond public contracts. The DeSantis administration has come under fire for obfuscating COVID-19 data, most recently taking flak for changing guidelines for how hospitals report ICU beds, spawning an accusation from a Washington state pulmonologist that they’re “fudging the data.” Rebekah Jones, a former Department of Health data official who managed the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, has repeatedly accused the state of manipulating data. She said she was fired after refusing to do so; the official reason was insubordination. The state has denied it manipulated data, and at a press conference on Wednesday, Gov. DeSantis blasted questions about the accusations as part of a “conspiracy bandwagon.” State Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez (D-Miami) described as “alarming” what he’s seen as a pattern of the DeSantis administration dragging out records requests until someone brings a lawsuit or puts public pressure on the administration to release the records. “The administration’s attitude… during this pandemic has generally been to turn on its head how public records are supposed to work,” he told Florida Bulldog, calling it not only a “departure” from the law, but also from the state’s “tradition” of open government. Separate from the public records requests, he noted, is the failure to meet the posting requirements enshrined in state law. Rodriguez was a co-sponsor on the bipartisan 2013 bill that created the contract posting requirements, which he said the administration “obviously should be following.” Former Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, who pioneered the state’s contract tracking system, did not respond to requests for comment. Embarrassing contract withheld One contract withheld from public inspection was an embarrassing $11.3-million COVID-19 lab testing deal with a firm founded and led by a man who pleaded guilty to two financial felonies last year in Texas. Indur Services is a health coaching company, not a lab, founded and run by Brandt Beal, who Texas Department of Insurance investigators described as a “con artist.” It’s not clear exactly what Beal promised the state and what representations he made to state officials about his abilities. What is clear is that Beal had a major testing contract with the state and his company sought out an actual lab company to do the work. Division of Emergency Management (DEM) spokesman Jason Mahon offered a disquieting explanation for how Beal’s firm got the contract. “Time is of the essence when securing these critical testing supplies for Floridians, and that limited time does not allow for the Division to vet every company’s executive leadership or board of directors,” he said. Beal’s $11.3-million testing contract was later axed and the work given directly to a lab company. Instead, according to a state transparency database, the governor’s office paid Beal more than $2.2 million to provide testing supplies. A DEM spokesman said the supplies were provided. The contract, however, has not been posted. Likewise, the state hasn’t posted its approximately $9-million contract with Northwest Pathology, the lab company that got the testing work once assigned to Indur Services. Florida has paid more than $6.4 million on that contract to date, the database shows. Donor contracts withheld The state also has kept secret contracts handed out to big donors to Gov. DeSantis’s election effort. The Executive Office of the Governor contracted with the lab firm BioReference to provide COVID-19 testing. BioReference is owned by OPKO Health, which is chaired by South Florida billionaire Phillip Frost, who gave $75,000 to Friends of Ron DeSantis in 2018, along with another $2,700 to the governor’s election campaign itself. The contract’s value is unclear because it has fluctuated without explanation on the state database. It is currently valued at $2.7 million. A second BioReference COVID contract, this one with the Florida Department of Health for $2 million, has also been kept away from public view. It does not appear on Florida’s contract database, and the department has refused to release a copy since Florida Bulldog first requested it on May 1. Neither Frost nor BioReference would comment on the firm’s contracts with the state. Further, the state is also hiding a now-canceled $11-million testing contract the governor’s office had with Southwest Regional PCR. The state canceled the contract after a major Florida hospital chain canceled its own deal with the firm and raised questions about the validity of the firm’s tests – allegations the firm adamantly denies. In late April, Gov. DeSantis bragged about the deal as part of an effort to ramp up testing, only to cancel it weeks later without any tests being done. The unseen contracts represent some of the state’s earliest efforts to secure testing, equipment and supplies to address the pandemic, yet the DeSantis administration continues to leave Floridians in the dark about how millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent. The DeSantis administration’s decision to ignore questions about why it has not released copies of state contracts as required by state law threatens to keep the public in the dark even as it gears up to confront a deadly surge in COVID-19 cases. Florida has “all the markings of the next large epicenter,” doctors who run the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s policy blog wrote on June 17. “The risk there is the worst it has ever been in our projections.”
Hey GWB - still waiting for your response when you stated it was "impossible" for Florida to have that many tests, and went with the alternative portal that shows numbers that don't jive with JHU (your used source). Here is the link in case you "misplaced" it. I'm only posting because you've said you'll re-evaluate when facts present themselves. But hey, keep posting editorials and calling it science.
I'm not saying it is a downtrend. I'm saying why DeSantis might have said it. In fact, I specifically say it might be too early to say anything about that.
The Miami Herald outlines DeSantis history of lying about data, hiding data, and manipulating data... A NUMBERS GAME The Florida COVID-19 data said one thing while Gov. DeSantis sometimes said another https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article242937591.html When Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that most of the state would reopen for business on May 4, he cited his administration’s “data-driven strategy” and success at achieving “critical benchmarks in flattening the curve” to contain COVID-19. But a review of the data the governor was using shows his public pronouncements were often in conflict with real-time facts. He either wasn’t aware the data showed that community spread, regional outbreaks and death tolls were worse than he was telling Floridians, or he selectively focused on outdated statistics to make his case. A glaring example came on April 29, when the governor brought a slideshow to a news conference to announce that all counties but three in South Florida would lift stay-home orders for many nonessential businesses. The state had satisfied the “gating criteria,’’ the benchmarks established by the White House Coronavirus Task Force and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to begin the phased reopening of the state, DeSantis said. “The curve was flattened,’’ he said. “The goal has been satisfied” and “we’ve done much better than everybody said we would do.’’ The curve of new cases had indeed flattened. Both new cases and the percentage of people testing positive for the disease — the “positivity rate” — had been in decline for much of April. But the data suggest that by the time DeSantis announced reopening, those trends were showing signs of reversing. At the time the governor spoke, the state, excluding South Florida, was on the third day of a four-day rise in the positivity rate, according to confidential Department of Health data obtained exclusively and analyzed by the Miami Herald. New cases were also showing an uptick around that time. Those increases could have made parts of the state ineligible for reopening for at least 10 more days, depending how the state applied the criteria set by the CDC. To follow the White House Guidance, a region had to show either a two-week downward trajectory in new cases or in the positivity rate. Within that period, new cases could not increase for more than four consecutive days, and positivity rates for no more than two to three days. Additionally, in the two-week period before reopening, new cases trended slightly upward for the first time after weeks of decline, the Herald analysis showed. That trend, along with the uptick in positivity, rendered the governor’s claim of a “data-driven strategy” for reopening tenuous at best. The state has never released the specific data and criteria it used to reopen, despite Miami Herald inquiries. The Herald analysis was based conceptually on the CDC guidelines, but should not be considered a perfect replica. (Read our methodology.)The Herald’s analysis would not have been possible had it solely relied on the data published by the Department of Health on either its dashboard, a broad collection of numbers, graphics and trends, or the state’s case line data portal, with detailed information, minus personal identification, on every coronavirus case in the state. DOH’s public data are incomplete, sometimes changed without explanation, and have had information removed following questions from reporters. Instead, the Herald obtained three internal data sets that allow a never-before-seen look at information the state has not released publicly. The data sets include information on all COVID-19 tests performed in Florida — negative and positive. Addressing the Herald’s questions about the underlying data, Department of Health spokesman Alberto Moscoso responded not with answers but by sending previously published charts. “At the close of April 2020, the state of Florida has achieved several critical benchmarks outlined by the White House, relating to syndromic surveillance, epidemiology and outbreak decline, and healthcare capability indicating successful management of the COVID-19 pandemic,’’ he wrote. Excluding South Florida, the decline in new cases had stopped in late April, roughly two weeks after the governor began talking about reopening the state. Positivity also showed sustained increase. Cellphone mobility data provided by Descartes Labs show that Floridians, who had largely stayed at home for a month, started moving around again more by late April. Last week, DeSantis continued to loosen social distancing rules and announced the 64 counties excluding South Florida had reached the next stage and could now move to Phase 2 reopening. Starting Friday, June 5, groups of up to 50 people were allowed to gather and bars and nightclubs could resume operations. As of the day of that announcement, June 3, new cases in the state had consistently been trending up since mid-May, the Herald’s analysis of real-time data found.The trends could not be attributed solely to increases in testing, which had been inconsistent and sometimes declining during that period. As DeSantis made the Phase 2 announcement at Universal Studios in Orlando, he again pointed to charts and graphs that showed the virus slowing in Florida. But, as when he announced Phase 1, his office has refused to make public the data he used to prepare the estimates and he has not disclosed the criteria used to make his decision. TRUMP ALLEGIANCE For DeSantis, the metrics aren’t just about public health, they are also about politics in a state that’s pivotal for President Donald Trump’s reelection. The day before DeSantis said he was lifting his stay-home order for nonessential businesses on April 29, the governor went to the White House for what was billed as an impromptu news conference with the president. He brought with him his posters and charts. “We’re going to approach it in a very measured, thoughtful and data-driven way,’’ DeSantis told the president as reporters and television cameras recorded the scene. “And look, over the last two weeks, we’ve seen a consistent decrease, an average decrease in the positivity rate the last four or five days,’’ DeSantis continued, as the president nodded. But that’s not what the numbers said. Under the CDC’s nonbinding guidelines, there should be a “downward trajectory” over 14 days in the percentage of all people tested for the virus who test positive. The other measure used by the CDC is “a downward trajectory of documented cases within a 14-day period.” Neither the CDC nor the White House guidelines provide a definition for what qualifies as a “downward trajectory.” If DeSantis had any misgivings about the new numbers, he didn’t disclose them. Was it possible he wasn’t aware of the shift in data? The governor’s communications team has not responded to multiple requests from the Miami Herald for a response. Prior to meeting the president, DeSantis had embarked on a coordinated campaign to reopen the state that began with convening a task force of business executives and holding news conferences with several hospital officials. The hospital officials underscored how hospitals had been able to accommodate the surge in COVID-19 cases. The task force, which included no healthcare professionals, expected to meet for a final sign-off of the reopening plan. Instead, the plan was drafted by the governor’s office and the task force never reconvened. Public health experts were warning the governor to wait, suggesting that a premature opening would prolong the economic pain. During the crucial months following the onset of the pandemic in Florida, DeSantis emerged as the go-to governor for the president. When Trump needed an example for how a big state was ready to resume business to restart the faltering economy, he invited DeSantis to the White House to demonstrate how Florida had “flattened the curve.” DeSantis has said he favored targeted mitigation — such as limiting movements in areas with the worst outbreaks, rather than applying uniform restrictions statewide — and credits that with helping Florida businesses while avoiding becoming the next New York or New Jersey. For DeSantis, close alignment with the president and his messaging has been a successful strategy ever since Trump endorsed him over his rivals in the 2018 Republican primary, when the former congressman aired a television ad with his toddler son using blocks to “build a wall.” DeSantis approached his handling of the coronavirus like a campaign. He crisscrossed the state and conducted news conferences with data charts and graphics, delivering details about mobile testing units, attempts to acquire personal protective equipment and the state’s effort to protect vulnerable elderly in long-term care homes. It was a message that said: “We got this,’’ more than one that said: “Beware.” The governor’s approach mirrored the president’s. When the president was rejecting stay-home orders on March 23, DeSantis called them a “blunt instrument” and said “you simply cannot lock down our society with no end in sight.” By that point, cellphone data showed that most of the public didn’t need the governor to guide their actions as people were already moving around 70% less than normal. Just as Trump deferred to governors the decision of whether to issue and lift closure orders, DeSantis deferred to local leaders. In Miami-Dade County, which had some of the highest numbers in the state, and other hard-hit areas, officials shut down eat-in dining and bars and closed beaches weeks before the governor stepped in. While governors in other states were issuing stay-home orders, DeSantis endured sharp criticism as he waited for direction from the White House. The governor spent little time talking about prevention or the value of social distancing, and when it came to mask wearing to prevent the aerosol transmission of the virus, he was never an advocate. DeSantis, like Trump, rarely wears a mask — except in Miami, where it has been required. Photographers caught him incorrectly strapping on an N95 mask one time and another time wearing only one glove. “If you put the mask on, you’re more likely to be fiddling around your face, and actually you may even be more likely to transmit the virus if you’re in contact with it,” DeSantis told reporters in February. “So those really need to be used for healthcare professionals, who are treating patients who may or may not have this illness but who may be susceptible to it.” VALID DATA A CASUALTY With White House approval, the governor set the reopening date for May 4, despite the worrying trends in the data. At the time, the three counties of South Florida, which had the highest number of COVID-19 infections in the state andwere excluded from reopening, seemed to meet the federal reopening criteria. Testing was increasing or even. New cases and positivity were down. Those trends in South Florida wouldn’t last, however, reversing by mid-May. Across the state, trends in new cases continued upward as the month of May concluded, the Herald analysis showed. So did positivity trends. Johns Hopkins University explains that the rate at which people test positive for COVID-19 “is an important indicator because it can provide insights into whether a community is conducting enough testing to find cases. If a community’s positivity is high, it suggests that that community may largely be testing the sickest patients and possibly missing milder or asymptomatic cases. A lower positivity may indicate that a community is including in its testing patients with milder or no symptoms.” The World Health Organization has said that in countries that have conducted extensive testing for COVID-19, the rate of positive cases should remain at 5% or lower for at least 14 days before loosening social distancing requirements. Dr. Leonard Marcus, founding co-director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, a joint program of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School, said that while “every crisis is political ... history will remember this case as the most politicized of crises.” “There have been many casualties in this crisis, and one of the casualties has been confidence in the validity of the numbers that are being shared by the government,” Marcus said. He said that effective leaders not only give people “evidence-based facts” and provide the role modeling for behavior they want people to follow, but the public has “got to believe that what you’re telling them is true, which even includes telling them that there’s some things that we don’t know.” “If people have confidence in their leaders and in their institutions, and in the viability of those institutions, we will be resilient,’’ he said. “And if people lose that confidence, that’s going to make being resilient, or the economy resilient, or the country resilient, or our standing in the world, all the more difficult.” SOUTH FLORIDA NUMBERS When the governor moved to reopen the remaining three South Florida counties for Phase 1, the same pattern that occurred in the other 64 counties was happening: Counties seemed to meet — then ultimately missed — the benchmarks. “Florida satisfies the gating criteria statewide, even including Miami, Palm Beach and Broward,’’ DeSantis declared at a news conference in Miami on May 6, a statement that advanced the announcement that the remaining three counties would return nonessential employees back to work. The governor cited the decline influenza-like illness, the decline in positive cases, and the rise in the number of tests as the rate of people testing positive declined. At the time, he was right. On May 6, DOH data showed that after testing increased across South Florida, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties met federal guidelines for reopening by showing a two-week decline in the rate of people testing positive for the infection. But the good news didn’t last. The day before Palm Beach reopened on May 11, the county’s positivity rate was trending upward again. South Florida as a whole also saw a potentially disqualifying sustained increase in positivity rates over a four-day period, according to the Herald analysis of DOH testing data. BLAMING BATCHES OF DATA The governor has repeatedly downplayed spikes in positive results in COVID-19 case numbers as “data dumps” from private testing labs that report a large number of results from a single address, such as a prison or nursing home, on one day. However, while batches of more than 20 tests from a single location in a single day do sometimes affect trends, the May 10 rise in positivity was still present after batches of tests were removed, the Herald analysis showed. The same trend was in evidence on May 2, when the state, excluding South Florida, saw an increase in positive cases even after the large batches of tests were removed, the Herald found. And discounting the batches, the 64 counties that reopened on May 4 still did not appear to meet federal guidelines on positivity, according to a Herald analysis based on CDC reopening guidelines. MANIPULATING DATA? For months, questions have been raised about the reliability and transparency of the state’s data. In March, when the Miami Herald sought information from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office about COVID-19 deaths, attorneys for the state health department moved to block the records from becoming public. When the Tampa Bay Times found medical examiner data didn’t match the state’s records, the state ordered medical examiners not to release the numbers. In February, one out of four people getting sick from the coronavirus had not traveled out of state and had no known contact with another person, according to documents and data obtained by the Miami Herald, yet the governor and Surgeon General Scott Rivkees repeatedly asserted there was no “community spread.” Was the state divulging what it knew when it knew it? That issue came into focus when Rebekah Jones, the former geographic information sciences manager for the Department of Health, alleged on May 15 that the deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Health directed her to “manipulate” data on the state’s COVID-19 digital dashboard to downplay the threat in rural counties leading up to the reopening of the state. The state official, Shamarial Roberson, denied the claim. DeSantis accused Jones of insubordination and fired her. “Our data is transparent,’’ DeSantis said on May 20, with Vice President Mike Pence standing silently beside him, in a denunciation of the news media that went viral on Twitter. “In fact, [White House Coronavirus Task Force member] Dr. [Deborah] Birx has talked multiple times about how Florida has the absolute best data,’’ he said. “So any insinuating otherwise is just typical partisan narrative trying to be spun.” Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the lone Democrat in statewide office, has been the most outspoken critic of the way the governor has handled his messaging to the public during the pandemic. “The public listens to their elected officials and tries to ascertain what’s in their best interest by what the elected officials are saying on TV and in press conferences,’’ she said. “And there was a lot of misinformation. Instead of erring on the side of caution and saying ‘we don’t know enough so please be safe,’ we got ‘no big deal, this is going to go away soon.’ ” The result, she said, was “public confusion, runs on toilet paper, and conflicting information.”
This is supposed to be "news". Many of those tiny hospitals showing 0% Capacity don't have any ICU Beds to Begin with!!! Moron.
Florida’s hidden data skews COVID-19 test results https://www.sun-sentinel.com/corona...0200715-cpwwngaefzdnpitbs7buh7zsei-story.html Florida might be minimizing the depth of its COVID-19 problem by underreporting its rate of positive tests, experts say. The method used to calculate the “positivity rate” — a critical measure of the pandemic’s progression— puts more emphasis on negative tests, skewing the results in that direction. A person who tests positive is counted only once, but negative tests can be counted repeatedly if the same person got more than one test. In addition, just as the pandemic raced out of control this month, the state changed the formula. It now mixes two different types of tests, including one that produces more false negative results. The upshot of both factors is that the rate of positive tests, as quoted by the state, could make the situation look significantly better than it is, experts say. How much the rate would change, if calculated differently, is impossible to know because the state refuses to release key pieces of raw data. “There is a peculiar odor around the data in Florida and there has been for some time,” said Dr. William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Olivier Lacan, a volunteer for the COVID Tracking Project, which has followed data across the country, said Florida’s lack of transparency is fueling distrust. “The right wing is saying the numbers can’t be trusted; the left is saying the numbers might be higher. Just show the math!” he said. Governor Ron DeSantis frequently cites the positivity rate to justify reopening schools and businesses. He tweeted the statistic 12 times between late April and the end of May. He last tweeted the figure on May 26, but he has highlighted it during several news conferences. Recently, his spokeswoman, Helen Aguirre-Ferré, has tweeted the statistic twice, pointing to a four-day-long decline in the measure as a silver lining in Florida’s looming pandemic thundercloud. That trend reversed on Monday. How it’s calculated Here’s how state officials say the positivity rate is calculated: “We only count the positive test once,” Alina Alonso, the head of the Palm Beach County Department of Health, told Palm Beach County commissioners on July 7. “We do count the negative tests more than once because there are reasons for people testing negative and getting multiple test results. But the positives by name are only captured once,” she said. That means that the same person with multiple negative tests can be counted several times. That’s fine for the day-to-day positivity rate, said Jason Salemi, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health, but a problem arises when you try to calculate an average over a series of days from the daily statistic. “If the same people are testing negative and getting reported over and over … well, the results could be quite different from a true person-level analysis,” he said. The number of people being retested on a daily basis is potentially very large, Lacan said. On Tuesday, he estimates that at least 21,000 of the day’s approximately 53,700 negative tests were likely retests, since 45,753 people were tested for the first time that day, but about 67,000 tests were reported. Some 12,290 people tested positive for the virus, according to results released that day. Aguirre-Ferré acknowledged May 22 that the government was counting only people who tested positive once, but made no mention of negative tests in her statement. Late Wednesday evening, Alberto Moscoso, the spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, said the state counts multiple negative tests for the same person because “a negative test only reflects the individual’s status at the moment the specimen was collected. Since a person who tested negative previously remains susceptible to the virus, the subsequent test is still included in the denominator of the positivity rate calculation.” Combining tests Experts say the state’s decision July 1 to include Antigen tests in their count made the situation even more murky. Before then, the state had published results for PCR tests only. PCR tests are the “gold standard” of virus tests, since they detect pieces of the virus genetic material with a high degree of accuracy. But they can be slow to process. Antigen tests, which instead look for specific proteins on the exterior of the virus, are much faster to process. However, they are significantly less accurate. One popular test, produced by Quidel, a pharmaceutical company, takes as little as 15 minutes but can miss up to 20% of positive infections. Combining the two types of tests into one statistic could drive down the positivity rate, since a significant number of Antigen tests may be false negatives. “Do not combine those cases, just don’t,” said Hanage, the associate professor at Harvard. “That’s lunatic. If that’s the case in Florida, people should be up in arms.” It is unclear how many antigen tests the state has performed since July 1. The state does not disclose this figure in its daily reports and has not responded to questions about the number of tests performed. Dr. Amira Roess, professor of Global Health and Epidemiology at George Mason University, said that no matter how the data gets parsed, the conclusion right now is pretty clear. “The bottom line is that their percent positivity is high, and it keeps going high,” she said. “Florida’s hospitalization is getting very close to hitting capacity in some cities. It’s very clear that they’ve got a COVID hot spot.”
Without spending hours going through all your spam, you claim that there is "irrefutable proof" in this article. Lets start with one claim. Which claim shows that DeSantis intentionally manipulated data? One claim, gwb. That's all. Show me one example where data was manipulated. SPECIFICALLY. Don't just spam links. Try to actually do some work.