States Scale Back Virus Reporting Just As Cases Surge

[appalachiablue]

Source: AP News

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this month just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations and deaths in their communities.

The shift to weekly instead of daily reporting in Florida, Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota marked a notable shift during a pandemic in which coronavirus dashboards have become a staple for Americans closely tracking case counts and trends to navigate a crisis that has killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.

In Nebraska, the state actually stopped reporting on the virus altogether for two weeks after Gov. Pete Ricketts declared an end to the official virus emergency, forcing news reporters to file public records requests or turn to national websites that track state data to learn about COVID statistics. The state backtracked two weeks later and came up with a weekly site that provides some basic numbers.

Other governments have gone the other direction and released more information, with Washington, D.C., this week adding a dashboard on breakthrough cases to show the number of residents who contracted the virus after getting vaccines. Many states have recently gone to reporting virus numbers only on weekdays...

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-f9c58c50f565e707be9bedfa9a82319e

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- May 4, 2021. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, center, speaks during a news conference at West Miami Middle School in Miami. Several states scaled back their reporting of COVID-19 statistics this July 2021, just as cases across the country started to skyrocket, depriving the public of real-time information on outbreaks, cases, hospitalizations & deaths in their communities.

[C Moon]

1. GOP politicians want to win 2022 more than they want people to live and be healthy.

[appalachiablue]

3. The ugly truth and the next election is everything

[Phoenix61]

2. I'm shocked Florida would be doing this!

Bwaaaaa…. Of course I’m not. Classic DeSatan move.

[Initech]

11. He seems to be determined to kill as many of his supporters as possible!

[Lovie777]

4. republicans don't care about the sick and dying . . .

[yaesu]

5. during the pandemic there should be a coordinated Federal response, tough love for the states

if they don't follow rules, should be mandatory reporting, mandatory prevention per Fed guidelines, ect... Any state that doesn't follow the rules lose all federal funding for everything except medical and food stamps.

[appalachiablue]

6. ++

[modrepub]

7. You Show Up At A Hospital

They are going to test you for COVID. Without any type of mandatory testing that's probably the only way we'll have some type of clue what's going on.

Up to the hospitalization stage, we're looking at minimum numbers. Most state health systems are pretty outdated and ill equipped to handle a pandemic from a data collection/reporting perspective. States in Republican hands starve their state government reporting and tracking systems. You can't report what you've designed not to see.

[peppertree]

8. Some - like deSatan - have from the beginning

[Ford_Prefect]

9. It seems to me they have also scaled back testing too.

Now they only test people who show up at the ER or the clinic with major symptoms of the original variant.

The CDC and others have been slack on this regarding the symptomatic differences between previous COVID and the more aggressive Delta version.

Those governors and other officials who've been so concerned to open things up have only made the path wider and easier for Delta and whatever comes after it.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. It's not just red states

Here in PA, they used to report 6 days a week and now they are down to 5 and Philly used to report 5 days a week and dropped down to twice a week. In both these instances, the "next report" they would have after a non-reporting day or days, is a combined one (to cover the results from a 2-3 or even 4-day period when there is a holiday), and in some cases, the reporting has been lackadaisical, with some missed days.

So for those of us (like me) still closely monitoring, it has become a PITA to pick up the trends right away.

Granted - I get that many of the staff are REALLY REALLY sick of it given the day-after-day stress for over a year, of making sure that the reports get out on time and accurately because the databases and programmed reports can really get bollixed, particularly if updates are made to the hosting sites and/or the software. And over the past year, the types of data being reported, have continually changed.

But basically, once we made it past Memorial Day when Delta was still mostly "over there" and case rates in many localities had dropped to levels not seen since the beginning of the pandemic, it seems that the state and County Health Departments pretty much went into cruise control, and scaled back in an effort to "move on", and focus on other stuff like "gun violence" or "the opioid crisis" or "food-borne illnesses" (BBQ season) or "how to handle extreme heat" or "ticks and Lyme disease or mosquitos and West Nile Virus".

And then Delta invaded...

[TheBlackAdder]

12. Florida hasn't reported one death since June 11th.

.

https://infection2020.com/#

.

[Ford_Prefect]

13. Maybe the office is closed for the summer break?

[Beartracks]

14. Republicans never let a crisis go to waste. They'll even cause the crisis...

... or at least make it worse, just to be sure they've got one to use.

=======

[AZ8theist]

15. I remember when Repukes said Obama care would create "death panels"....

Little did we know that the Repuke Party would become the "cancel culture" of life itself....