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Opinion: America is following disastrous Trump advice to slow down testing
Aug 13, 2020 1 min, 37 secs
And the drop in testing is happening at the same time that case numbers across the US have shown a drop as well, the latter to great fanfare; the former without a peep.

There are several groups that track national testing numbers.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), though recently shut out from receiving hospital data in a mid-July White House decision, still updates national testing information in a large, though incomplete, sample.

This data demonstrates a distinct fall-off from about 2.5 million tests a week for most of July to less than 2 million in the most recent week, ending August 1.

To review this data by geography and by age group, scroll to the bottom of the Covid view site and click the "download raw data" hyperlink.

Only 14 states in a country with a pandemic were actually increasing their testing rate.

And here's the worst part: per the same Hopkins data, 36 states had a rising rate of positive results.

Experts in the US look for a 5% rate, which is met by only one third of the states, while the Covid Exit Strategy website, managed by a consortium of public health experts that tracks readiness to reopen, favors a rate below 3% positive.

The states advertising their dropping case numbers have both dropping testing rates and alarming rates of positive tests.

For comparison, in New York State, the testing rate is stable and the positive result rate is 0.9%.

This however is what seems to be happening.

If true, the audacity to cook the books in broad daylight resembles apparent attempts to brazenly interfere with the Post Office in hopes of confusing the November presidential election and perhaps is of a piece with the "positive feedback loop" aides have imposed to show the President better Covid-19 numbers than actually are true.

Of course the trends of fewer tests and fewer cases -- but disastrously rising test positivity rates -- may have another, completely innocent explanation.

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