Old cases and new cases of Covid-19 all counted as new cases in CDC test tallies.

Old cases and new cases of Covid-19 have been counted as new cases by the CDC and many states. This is just being acknowledged now, even though this screwed up data was being used to plan state openings.  The jaw-dropping error results in over-stated bad news.

There are viral tests to find out who has active virus in their system.  There are antibody tests to find out who has recovered from or begun to recover from the virus.   A big difference but the results of these tests have been dumped into a single bin.  In some cases, people weren't even aware they were doing it.    Story at The Atlantic which has been changing the conversation, not just writing stories.

Favourite quote:

Before and After are Different

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told us when we described what the CDC was doing. “How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.”