Hide the Decline! Coronavirus Edition

Reported Covid-19 daily deaths (likely exaggerated for reasons I posted on months ago) have been declining inexorably since their peak, and are now about 10 percent of the maximum. Even that is overstated because of backdating in states like Delaware and New Jersey that resulted in large single day death reports that summed deaths that had occurred over periods of weeks or months.

We can’t have that, can we? How are we going to sustain the panic, as politically useful as it is, if we report good news?

No problem–just switch the metric! Whereas for weeks we were told the Grim Death Toll narrative, that has disappeared down the Memory Hole, to be replaced by the Skyrocketing Cases narrative, especially in Red States such as Texas, Florida, and Arizona.

I have been calling bullshit on the case numbers as a meaningful metric since March. It’s even more bullshit now.

A major reason case numbers (i.e., the number of positive tests) are BS is that testing is not a random process, but is endogenous. Moreover–and this is crucial now–the process driving who is tested is changing. Whereas before tests were focused on the symptomatic or the particularly vulnerable, testing is now more widespread. Some companies are requiring employees to be tested in order to return to work, or to remain at work if they have the sniffles.

As a result, more people are testing positive. Moreover, the average age of those testing positive has declined dramatically (because they were censored from the test population before). Most of those people are symptomatic, and those who are experience mild symptoms. Those under 60 exhibit little risk of death, or serious illness (especially if they do not have other serious health conditions). Those who are sick enough to require hospitalization are less likely to require ICU care, and those who do tend to recover at high rates (without ventilation), and have relatively short stays.

As a result, there has been a striking divergence between rising case numbers, and deaths.

But that doesn’t fit certain political needs. So we hear virtually nothing about deaths, but only shrieking about case numbers. This exploits the earlier misconception–misinformation, actually–that the death rate from the virus is high. Indeed, as positive tests accumulate, and serological studies accumulate, it is clear that the infection death rate is in the range of .1-.25 percent, far smaller than the earlier estimates that remain embedded in the memories of most.

The shrieking is particularly intense in–and at–Texas. Yes, Houston has seen a large increase in positive cases. But the deaths in Texas (and Houston) have never been large (up until now 2020 has seen fewer pneumonia-related deaths than in the typical year), and are not trending up . Not that you’d know from reading the media.

So there has been a reprise of the overwhelming the health care system narrative.

The worst sinner at this is my local POS newspaper, the Chronical. This article in particular, which insinuated that Governor Abbott (and no, I’m not a fan) had coerced Houston hospitals into covering up impending doom.

The article starts out with a lie, claiming that Houston ICU utilization had hit 100 percent. Actual data show this did not happen, and that Houston ICU utilization has been fairly constant over since April. Even throwing around scare numbers about 90 plus percent utilization is misleading. Of course hospital facilities are sized so that they do not have persistent unutilized capacity. That is wasteful, and inflates costs. As the data in the link show, moreover, hospitals–rationally–have the ability to expand capacity.

As I said in a very early post, capacity is not a destiny–it is a choice.

Yes, there as an increasing number of Covid patients in ICU. But this is clearly another manifestation of changing testing protocols, and most importantly, of the same problem that makes even the death data meaningless: lumping people in the hospital with Covid together with those who are hospitalized because of Covid. If the increased Covid numbers were there because of Covid, you would see ICU usage go up overall. You don’t. It’s oscillating around normal levels.

It should also be noted that there are reasons to believe that people who should have gone to ICUs, or to hospitals, did not because of Covid. This suppressed numbers and makes it dubious to attribute any increase in utilization to Covid.

As for the supposed coverup, the hospital systems did not stop reporting hospitalization/ICU data, but the projections of future usage.

The outrage! Yeah, because Covid-related predictions have always been spot on, right?

In fact, the only competition between projections is which is the most absurd.

The POS Chronical’s political agenda and utter hypocrisy is on full display:

Then, after reporting numerous charts and graphs almost daily for three months, the organization posted no updates until around 9 p.m. Saturday, sowing confusion about the hospitals’ ability to withstand a massive spike in cases that has followed Gov. Greg Abbott’s May decisions to lift restrictions intended to slow the virus.

Gee. What else happened around the same time. Let me think? Protests ring a bell?

But of course, the protests (and the massive George Floyd funeral) are sacrosanct, and out of respect the virus took a holiday and didn’t exploit the conditions (large crowds) that are supposedly the main source of contagion. (EG., MLB will be restarting–but without fans, because otherwise Minute Maid and other parks would be Covid Central.

The hysteria over case numbers reminds me of a phrase from the Climategate emails: “Hide the decline!” Just as in Climategate, there was a divergence between a number that mattered (actual temperature) and a bogus number (proxy data-based temperatures): actual temps were flat/declining when the proxy number was going up inexorably.

So the battlecry became: Hide the decline!

We are seeing the same thing now. Hide the decline in deaths by hyping irrelevant case numbers, misinterpreting those numbers, and making dire forecasts at odds with the actual data.

If you will recall, the entire justification for lockdowns was to “flatten the curve” to protect the healthcare system. The underlying rationale was that the virus’s spread was inevitable, but we need to control the rate. That is, suppression/elimination was an impossibility until herd immunity was achieved.

Based on that rationale, the surge in cases with low and arguably declining numbers of deaths and no data demonstrating an overwhelmed healthcare system is actually a good thing. It measures progress to herd immunity. Moreover, it’s better to have the spread now, in the summer, rather than when the flu season kicks in, and creates its inevitable increase in demand for healthcare resources–including ICU beds.

But the media and many politicians are completely invested in panic, for malign and dishonest reasons. So it is essential to hide the decline, and hype the spike.