Miami Herald: "Playing games with numbers: Florida's COVID-19 test backlog..."

[blitzen]

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241882491.html

Florida is significantly under-reporting the state’s COVID-19 testing backlog, a blind spot in the data that could obscure the pandemic’s size and hamper efforts to decide when it’s safe to end restrictions such as social distancing — even as Gov. Ron DeSantis touts the state’s transparency when it comes to coronavirus.

On its public website, the Florida Department of Health says about 1,400 people statewide are waiting for their test results. But that’s an undercount, the department acknowledged in response to questions from the Miami Herald. And it’s likely a massive one.

That’s because the state only reports the number of Floridians waiting to hear back from state labs, not private ones — and those private labs are completing more than 90% of Florida’s tests. The state website doesn’t say that its figures exclude the vast majority of pending tests for the novel coronavirus.

[lamp_shade]

1. DeSantis is a dimwit. Did he really think nobody would notice?

[Celerity]

2. he is playing to the ultimate dimwit crowd, who are Pavlovian trained to reject anything non-MAGAt