Data Without Doctoring Dr. David Owen 08/18/2020
Morning update: Our usual spike in deaths for a Monday, representing catch up, although this spike is the smallest on a Monday for the past couple of weeks (small consolation). Overall hospitalizations continue in a downtrend statewide and are stable in the tri-county area for today. Positive tests have been cut in half over the past week, but I make little of it due to the lag time in posting results and the growing disinterest in getting tested in the first place. My guess is that vigorous testing will settle on health care workers, which is where it should be and that the general population is just "sick" of it and will not line up to be tested anymore. The testing of these high risk people may keep the daily positive test data high, which would provide a false sense of a worsening of the pandemic, which would in turn keep schools closed. PH officials will have to look through these test results and lower the weight these daily results provide in their decisions one way or the other. I get the sense with the slow resolution of the pandemic for this time frame, anyway, that PH and school officials will have to bite the bullet and just open it up. Deal with the consequences as they come. Positive tests during open school are a fact we are going to have to live with, unfortunately.