I'm not sure I agree with your headline. You treat CDC as one voice and then the negative side is made up of many voices.

I believe there are people on both sides that would lie about numbers to support their position. Whether consciously or unconsciously. I also believe the vast majority of people are trying to present the information accurately based upon the information they have and the tools they have available to present said information. It is very tough when you could look to a single state and find that state numbers don't match numbers on a local/county site. Numbers on a one news organization site doesn't match numbers on another channel's site. Educational Institution sites numbers don't match. It seems we don't have a single source of truth which makes validating who is right tough. And many like myself don't have time to scour the thousands of sights out there.

Everyone is lying to make Trump look bad. The whole world is out to get Trump.

Don't you know anything?

That wall that was supposedly build by Trump supporters? FAKE NEWS!!! It's a huge hunk of garbage made by NEVER TRUMPERS to make TRUMP LOOK BAD!!!

CDC IS LYING TO YOU!

FAUCI IS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING BECAUSE HE HATES TRUMP!

Nobody wants America to be Great Again.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Hmmm I dont know who is lieing. But I do know hospital data on covid is now bypassing the CDC and going right to the White House:

https://www.cnn.com/...-data-cdc/index.html

what the actual fuck?!?!?!

It doesn't matter. As the pain keeps coming into the fall, some will turn against their Orange Lord and some will still be wearing their cute little "Make America Great Again" hats 4 years running, as if they are still waiting for it to happen.

One thing this pandemic is teaching is us is that the US' main failing is gathering accurate data. Our data is all over the place and unreliable. Just look at the recent issue in Florida with the positivity rate being reported as 100% by a lot of labs. We also have issues of double counting positive people because they get tested multiple times. In WA we just removed about 40 people from the death toll. In multiple states deaths are being reported that were months old but its being reported as deaths that day. Its hard to garner trust with these issues. I'm starting to rely more on data scientists instead of medical professionals when interpreting this data.

And we also haven'r really left the mindset at the beginning of all of this about the unchecked death toll of this virus from places like the Imperial College that never even came close to being reality. We've never really reset our thinking.

Side note to what you are saying:

One of the things I've learned at my job (I work as a data scientists in an enormous engineering company) is that if I am presenting material to a whole room full of very smart people, some of whom are engineers, but most of whom are not, it is "more believable" to present simple, easy to understand numbers that are consistent and add up properly, than to present the actual data.

There is this attraction that people have to want to "outsmart the experts." I've seen this over and over again, where senior managers, directors, execs, etc. will scan a slide hoping to find a 2 + 2 = 5 error. More often, it was a 2.32 + 2.41 = 5 "error."

On the flip side, the smartest of the smart technical people were the complete opposite. If your numbers are too round, then they think you are lying.

So why should I expect carpet cleaners, truck drivers, and painters to be any different? They look at the numbers the CDC puts out, and then they try to outsmart those egg headed scientists who think they know everything.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

I read the article as sowing suspicion of the CDC because it could be controlled by the Trump administration. So both CNN and your rural friend are spreading doubts about the CDC, but for entirely opposed reasons. Plus the narrative of the lying can go in other directions: Is the lying to overstate our testing capacity or to overstate our number of new cases? Those reasons are tribally opposed as well.

Edit: I don't think the "who is lying" question is always such a fruitful one -- for this case that seems true.

I agree with you here. I worked running accounting numbers for a software company years and years ago. I was not an accountant, but could do basic math really well. :) What that really meant is 1. I could do the accounting and 2. The numbers I gave were believable because I didn't know how to fake it. That made me valuable because to many project adminstrators were fudging their numbers to show the margin the CEO wanted.

I see this the same way. People are trying really hard to show that what they say or believe is correct. It is the problem with statistic. You can make numbers say anything you want, and only a small number of people will be able to prove you are lying or not completely honest.

I hope this is not directed at me. I did not bring up Trump or do anything to make this political. Personally I trust the CDC to do what is right and they would definitely be the group I would listen to on Corona. As compared to politicians, media or anyone in the LR.

Tribally opposite is a good way to describe it.

I know people on the right that believe we've not hit an iceberg.
And I know people on the left who think we've hot all of the icebergs in the ocean.


But what "tribe" do you think the epidemiologists belong to? What incentive is there to lie about the numbers to make everything appear worse than it actually is?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Barry, I don't know what to say.

Cooking the books on pandemic numbers is one thing. Either side could do that. The left could do it to make the right look bad. But a faction within the right is doing it explicitly to peddle a conspiracy theory. It's not politics to them........it's a fabricated reality they're selling.......one that even though it is fabricated..........they freaking believe it. That's scary.

Notice I didn't say "the right". I said a "faction". I say that to mean that not all righties are conspiracy theory nuts. But for some reason, it's become a popular staple in American conservatism.

I'm a registered dem. I'd vote for a fact and science based conservative any day of the week. But Republicans have largely allowed the "white male Christian genocide" narrative grow to Biblical proportions fueled by talking heads peddling conspiracy theories. That makes it hard for me to swallow that pill and pull that lever.

It's become the party of conspiracy theories and invented persecutions thanks to folks who didn't say anything, or folks like McCain who was just too late.

You know where that strategy comes from? It's roots are in the evolution of the white nationalist's culling of their more radical roots to become a more populist movement. Starting with Don and Derek Black and accomplished through Rush, the Tea Partiers, Hannity et al. Derek might be out now, but the folks he started on the new mission are off to a freaking great start.

To those folks everything is one massive conspiracy theory against white America.

The current language of a lot of these folks is right out of the Stormfront playbook. The guy who took Stormfront over cleaned house of all the traditional violent neo nazis out to murder folks. Then he starts pushing a new idea of "popularizing" the narrative of white male Christian genocide in America through using a lot more PC or common terms.

The old popular racist cusswords became things like "illegals". The popular "BLM is racist" trope, yeah.....that started out on Stormfront. The whole "rapists and murderers coming over the border". Yup, that too. The one about black on black murders that got posted almost weekly here for a while? Yup, that one too.

From the freaking guy's own mouth, in the book. Leader of Stormfront. Saying that's where that stuff came from.

It explains a lot of the words, phrases, conspiracies and narratives we hear out of the WH and from the connections to Trump and Fox media these days.

I do not believe it is some mass conspiracy that those racist guys leading that group infiltrated government in some kind of Qanon like manner to take over. I just think that they did a good enough job sanitizing the talking points that weak minds latched on to something that sounded good.

I do not think there is any deep state white power effort in US government. I think it's just stupid and selfish politicians who in weakness found a message that resonated with them and they're now parroting it. Whether they realize the origins or not.

Since some don't even know the origins, or how some of that shit started........that's why people get so freaking offended if you say something like "calling people illegals is racist". They don't get it. They don't know the origin. So yeah, you're offended if you've never heard of it.

That's why when people push against the "BLM is racist" or "Chicago black on black murders" bit they get so offended. They don't understand it's origin or intent.

You can call it my one conspiracy.......but I'd be DAMN curious to cross reference a username log of forum members that have been banned in the past and a list of Stormfront usernames. Some of the phrases and talking points at times have been, and still are suspiciously close.

I'm not done with the book yet, but man..........it makes a lot of what we see right now make a lot more sense.

I'll side with the one who allows the data to be publicly available.

It is not directed at anyone. It is basically what Trump has been moaning the past few weeks.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

You make some good points, but I think this has always been a facet of American "conservatism," or as you said "faction of," but I think its a pretty big faction.

I urge anyone to go back and look at the Great American Dust Bowl. Nothing has changed. They destroyed the land and killed a lot of people because they didn't want to be told what to do.

Someone will pipe in a say, "but there was a drought." I get it. There WAS a drought. But there were also solutions to mitigate the effects of the drought that were fought with hard resistance.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

Yesterday in Florida, there was a lot of discussion about Orlando Health reporting a staggering 98% positivity rate. At the same time, conservative sites started spreading the idea that the dems were cooking the books to make it look really bad. Shortly thereafter, Orlando Health said that the FDOH's report was incorrect and that the positivity rate was 9.4%, hinting that someone else had either made a clerical error, or cooked the numbers to make it seem like the health system was lying.
At the same time, the exact same thing happened with Lee Health system in South Florida, with the state report indicating 100% positivity, and LH correcting that it was 14%.
More here https://www.clickorlando.com/...nt-of-health-report/
I will let you decide who is interested in cooking the numbers to look good. My views are the same re. the CDC.

As someone who also works with data a great deal, what I find confounding on the argument about cooking the books is that there is a paper trail on all this. And how exactly would either party get that many people on board to cook the books. This isn't enron. We are talking about doctors, hospitals, labs, county health, state health, cdc. That's not to say that numbers aren't wrong---but that is a totally different issue.

Maybe if there is a one party system in the constitutional offices, supermajority in the legislature, appointed state health director that is partisan and several local people in on it...then maybe you could cook the books. Or you are paying off the labs. Neither of these seem probable to me.

I don't know if anyone else knows the data trail but I suspect it looks like this

local testing site/hospital/PCP --> lab --> original site/county health dept -->state health dept --> CDC --> HHS

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

A rule of thumb I live by is don't look for a conspiracy will simple incompetence will suffice. Many (most?) of the reporting errors here in FL for positivity rate have been off by precisely a whole order of magnitude: e.g. 99% positivity instead of 9.9%, 100% instead of 10%.

What boggles my mind is that antibody tests are still being counted as new cases. This is a known problem and nobody has taken the initiative to separate those tests out into a different data series.

Probably safe to say they don't distribute much into "Trumpista" territory.



I agree that there doesn't look like much net incentive to lie. High likelihood you'll get caught. Hard to coordinate. Devastating to the reputation if found out. And will it even make a difference?

There's an argument to be made that the high point of American competence was 1994 (during the hosting of the World Cup to be precise -- perhaps another thread). My perception is that the decline since has been swift.

That's what the article is about. But not new "cases," but adding them to the test pool.

If they are bumping the cases, I'd like to know. Do you have a link?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

I think all around it’s bullshit. It’s bullshit in the sense that what the CDC wants to happen isn’t possible as the implementation sucks. Further, the numbers get tweaked and yeah, I agree from a Trumps point of view that the numbers look worse than reality for many reasons that I won’t get into.

I called in May when I had headaches for a week. It was a weird headache as it felt like a hangover. Some people were claiming a COVID takes on similarities to altitude sickness which has a similar type of headache. Ok, get tested like the CDC asks me to do. I call the doctor and also look online. Lots of “run around” and difficulty. Doctor won’t let me come in. They call me back on the phone and I talk to a nurse. I tell them about the headaches and they tell me I can’t get tested. Why not? They tell me to quarantine for 14 days. Oh, yeah- ok. You can’t confirm it’s COVID, but I’m suppose to stay at home for 14 days?

Fast forward to last week. I was sick. Had many symptoms on the list for COVID. I was home for 3 days. I go online and answer questions and I qualify for a test. I find a testing site a CVS pharmacy in the drive-thru. I take the test. I’m at day 11 and I don’t have results yet. What a fricking joke. I’ve isolated myself for 11 days and I don’t have results. It’s bullshit.

I am suppose to worry about everyone else, that’s what “they” want us to do. So, I stay at home and yet it’s a bunch of games on getting an answer.

In the meantime, I don’t know a single person that has had COVID. Yet, this was going to kill us all back in March/April. Numbers show more people die in car accidents and we all drive around. If I did have a COVID, it was a 3 day crappy cold. It wasn’t worth shutting down the world. At least from my point of view. Yeah, yeah, save a Grandma... whatever, I’ve heard it all.

The short of your post: you think it's a hoax.

Gotcha.

About 38,000 people die from auto accidents a year. Not sure if that include suicide.

But who cares about facts, amirite?