Thread by @StevenJDuffield

Virginians: your state health department just covered up tens of thousands of COVID test results -- *all negative* --thereby confusing the public about how much risk there was, and likely extending the Phase One lockdown in NoVA. Does this bother you? THREAD 1/x

This scandal is in plain sight. You can read about it right here: vdh.virginia.gov/news/2020-news…. It's just that you have to think for a moment about the implications. 2/x

As Virginia Dep't of Health explains, at some point in the (recent?) past, VDH received tens of thousands of non-electronic reports from labs. This created a backlog for data-entry. (It was 2 labs, but they refuse to tell us which ones.) 3/x

When they received the non-electronic data, VDH then prioritized data-entry of the POSITIVE tests, and let all the negative tests go unreported to the public. That's right: they ONLY reported the positive tests to the public. 4/x

The press release does not say how long this went on, but they do say it was b/c they wanted to focus public health resources on the positives. Fair enough. It's weird that VDH wasn't able to draw on state employees to do *data entry,* but let's assume this was a smart. 5/x

But they didn't tell us what they were doing! They didn't say "hey, we are missing a bunch of negative results; we just don't have the exact numbers entered yet." No, instead, they just put out their reports every day - hiding this flaw. 6/x

Note that this was happening while Gov. Northam and local politicians were saying that the "percent positive of tests" was an essential metric for deciding how to reopen. 7/x

Moreover, this was a time when Northern Virginia has been under a delayed opening due to vague claims about "the data" -- but the claims never made sense based on the data we could see. We had steady improvement where it counted. 8/x

But it's even more bizarre, because now we know they were relying on "% positive" results that were grossly inflated because of all the missing negative test results! 9/x

This inexcusable conduct by the state health officials screwed up how the public looks at the numbers and, unless our state/local electeds *knew* about this problem with VDH's data releases, it affected how *they* looked at the numbers.

It changed policy.

10/x

I can't prove it, but I suspect that VDH's holding-back of this information caused NoVA to be stuck in Phase One for longer than we needed to be. More people cooped up for longer, and more economic damage. 11/x

To be fair, I have ranted against the "% positive" metric for 2 months because of the uncertainty as to quantity and location of tests - and I was right. I just had no idea that we also had a problem that VDH was holding back data and skewing public perceptions. 12/x

In a functioning political community with a competent Richmond or Northern Virginia press, this would be a scandal and our elected officials would be furious with VDH. (But did our elected officials know they were using skewed data? ) 13/x

This news comes on the heels of the article in @TheAtlantic by @alexismadrigal and Robinson Meyer @yayitsrob about how VDH was "juking" the data in another way. That was roughly a million years ago on May 13, 2020. theatlantic.com/health/archive… 14/x

Statewide officials who should care about this include @GovernorVA and Justin Fairfax. And what about @SenDaveMarsden @DickSaslaw @AdamEbbin and the rest of the state delegation in NoVA? Or local officials in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County? 15/x

Oh -- and according to the data actually reported as of today, the percent positive for VA over the past 14 days is just 7.03%.

But can you really trust the underlying data?

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