Of course Pennsylvania is among states misreporting Cornavirus statistics

According to several reports, Pennsylvania appears to be misrepresenting Coronavirus statistics. In addition to garden-variety data entry errors, Pennsylvania is among several states that are combining the results of antibody and viral tests. That is, they're reporting both current and past infections, possibly in an attempt to paint a rosier picture than exists. This is not a recent development either - Pennsylvania has been fumbling its statistics since the beginning.

While many people are claiming we're overreporting COVID deaths, the reverse is probably true: we're undercounting, if anything. There are a couple issues at hand here.

Issue #1 - COVID Total Deaths

There are no federal guidelines on how to classify a COVID death (because we don't know yet), so states are reporting this differently. This certainly has the effect of increasing the total death toll - to scare and control people, some will claim. But anyone scared by "total deaths" isn't looking at the big picture anyway. In other words, just because you're scared of it doesn't mean you need to be.

Since no doctor wants to miss a COVID case, it's only logical that they'd err on the side of over-reporting. No doctor wants to be accused of covering up COVID via telling the state that grandma died of the flu. 

This information - even the potentially wrong information - is useful to the medical and scientific community, who will be sifting through it for years to see which cases are "really" COVID. 

That is, it won't be until we report every COVID-adjacent death that we can figure out which ones likely died from COVID and which ones likely died from their underlying conditions. But, a case can't be taken into consideration if it's not in the dataset to begin with, so I argue that liberally reporting COVID cases is the best route, if not the most accurate right now.

It's a big pile of garbage data - hideous, yes. Scary? No.

More nefarious than errors made by people filling out the forms are the errors made by the people collecting and processing the forms. 

For example, the Bucks County Coroner reports 73 COVID deaths in 22 long-term care facilities, while the PA Department of Health reported over twice as many - 174 deaths. 

Under Pennsylvania law, deaths where there is a “known or suspected” contagious disease that creates a public health danger, such as COVID-19, must be reported in a timely manner to the county coroner’s office for investigation. There should not be a scenario where a death is reported to the state DOH but not the county coroner.

Here again, it's easy for a provider trying to do the right thing to err on the side of over-reporting. But how does the state end up counting more than twice as many? If they had made a simple error and counted it two or three times somehow, they would have ended up with 146 or 219 - not 174.

Several long-term care home operators acknowledged they did not report some deaths, either because residents had not been tested for COVID-19 before their deaths, the residents died in a hospital or hospice, or they simply didn’t know the deaths should be reported. 

But the nursing homes aren't all to blame. A Luzerne County nursing home with zero cases was surprised to find the Department of Health list it as having "less than five cases" - an implicitly non-zero category. 

Back in April, Pennsylvania officials blamed "computer glitches", the 21st century homework-eating canine. Now, they're blaming staff at nursing homes. Who will Pennsylvania officials blame next?

Issue #2 - COVID Testing Numbers

Second is the issue of what qualifies as "one person tested for COVID". Right now, there are broadly two answers to this:

    1) Someone who has been poked in the face with a cotton swab to see if they have the virus right now

    2) Someone who has had blood drawn to see if they have antibodies, i.e. had COVID in the past

This is where the conspiracy comes in, and compared to other ones on this site, is admittedly mild. But it's worth pointing out, even if to catch a glimpse of the kinds of trickery employed to reassure the public.

By combining numbers for viral and antibody testing, certain states are giving the appearance that they're more prepared to test people than they actually are.

These inflated statistics also serve to soften the blow of next year's anticipated "second peak". When the second peak is worse than the first, we can repeat "Well, the first set of numbers was inflated, so these must be, too", or "at least it's not as bad as last year", as if that's an excuse (though it will probably be true). 

As we continue to build up infrastructure in earnest, these little statistical games give the public a false sense of security. 

If you haven't figured it out, the game is to get the best Coronavirus Report Card by maximizing the number of Tests Performed and following whatever empty precautions the media prescribes.

I wonder what, if any, funding or financial incentives beyond reopening exist for Most Tests Performed or States With The Most Cases. I wonder how much of that is making its way to its intended purpose - i.e., COVID relief.

We have no national guidance. Nobody is listening to doctors. The state is openly manipulating data.