SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Fernando Olvera adjusts a ventilator on a patient in the Covid-19 intensive care unit at the United Memorial Medical Center on December 2, 2020 in Houston. (Photo: Go Nakamura via Getty Images)
DeSantis Accused of 'Statistical Sleight of Hand' to Conceal Surge in Covid Deaths
"Covid is a matter of life and death and people deserve to have information that is both accurate and understandable without having to decode it," said one critic.
Aug 31, 2021
Earlier this month, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' Department of Health deliberately altered how it reported Covid-19 deaths, making it appear as though the public health crisis was waning even as the state's residents endured the most significant escalation in infections since the pandemic began, according to a report published Tuesday by the Miami Herald.
New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that much of the United States is in the midst of a deadly coronavirus surge driven by the ultra-contagious Delta variant.
The Herald's analysis of data from Florida's Department of Health (DOH), however, found that the DeSantis administration responded to the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by changing the way it reported deaths to the CDC, which generated a misleading reduction in mortality.
The newspaper explained the implications of the DOH's sudden and unacknowledged move:
On Monday, Florida death data would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths reported to the CDC over the previous week had the health department used its former reporting system, the Herald analysis showed. Instead, the Monday update from Florida showed just 46 "new deaths" per day over the previous seven days.
The dramatic difference is due to a small change in the fine print. Until three weeks ago, data collected by DOH and published on the CDC website counted deaths by the date they were recorded--a common method for producing daily stats used by most states. On August 10, Florida switched its methodology and, along with just a handful of other states, began to tally new deaths by the date the person died.
If you chart deaths by Florida's new method, based on date of death, it will generally appear--even during a spike like the present--that deaths are on a recent downslope. That's because it takes time for deaths to be evaluated and death certificates processed. When those deaths finally are tallied, they are assigned to the actual date of death--creating a spike where there once existed a downslope and moving the downslope forward in time.
Tracking mortality by date of death is essential for long-term studies of Covid-19, Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, told the Herald. But the DOH's decision to abruptly stop counting deaths by date reported--a method that Floridians had come to rely on to see daily patterns immediately--obscures current trends, endangering public health.
"When you have big surges in deaths, the deaths by date reported will always show an increase while deaths by date occurred will go down," Salemi said. "Someone could have died yesterday and we may not know about it for a week, or two weeks."
Covid-19 mortality trends show up faster when using death report dates than death dates. The delayed collection of official date of death data is what made it possible for Florida's health department to claim that new Covid-19 deaths were decreasing this month even though the number of deaths reported each day was increasing.
Shivani Patel, a social epidemiologist and assistant professor at Emory University, called the DOH's decision to share temporarily incomplete data that downplays Covid-19 mortality--a change unveiled on August 10 without warning or justification--"extremely problematic."
The covert switch, which came just four days after the DOH requested 300 ventilators from the Biden administration, makes it "look like we're doing better than we are," said Patel, and that could distort public perceptions of the pandemic for weeks.
With infections and hospitalizations also reaching record highs in Florida this month, Patel said that "what we're seeing is an active rise in cases where we can't keep up, an active rise in deaths that, because of using actual date of deaths, has been shifted back in time and we have no idea where we really are."
Tim Hartford, an economist and author of The Data Detective, warned against subtly manipulating presentations of data without adequate explanations, which he called a "statistical sleight of hand."
"The truthful-yet-deceptive framing of numbers is a serious problem," he said. "Covid is a matter of life and death and people deserve to have information that is both accurate and understandable without having to decode it."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Kenny Stancil
Kenny Stancil is senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project and a former staff writer for Common Dreams.
Earlier this month, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' Department of Health deliberately altered how it reported Covid-19 deaths, making it appear as though the public health crisis was waning even as the state's residents endured the most significant escalation in infections since the pandemic began, according to a report published Tuesday by the Miami Herald.
New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that much of the United States is in the midst of a deadly coronavirus surge driven by the ultra-contagious Delta variant.
The Herald's analysis of data from Florida's Department of Health (DOH), however, found that the DeSantis administration responded to the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by changing the way it reported deaths to the CDC, which generated a misleading reduction in mortality.
The newspaper explained the implications of the DOH's sudden and unacknowledged move:
On Monday, Florida death data would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths reported to the CDC over the previous week had the health department used its former reporting system, the Herald analysis showed. Instead, the Monday update from Florida showed just 46 "new deaths" per day over the previous seven days.
The dramatic difference is due to a small change in the fine print. Until three weeks ago, data collected by DOH and published on the CDC website counted deaths by the date they were recorded--a common method for producing daily stats used by most states. On August 10, Florida switched its methodology and, along with just a handful of other states, began to tally new deaths by the date the person died.
If you chart deaths by Florida's new method, based on date of death, it will generally appear--even during a spike like the present--that deaths are on a recent downslope. That's because it takes time for deaths to be evaluated and death certificates processed. When those deaths finally are tallied, they are assigned to the actual date of death--creating a spike where there once existed a downslope and moving the downslope forward in time.
Tracking mortality by date of death is essential for long-term studies of Covid-19, Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, told the Herald. But the DOH's decision to abruptly stop counting deaths by date reported--a method that Floridians had come to rely on to see daily patterns immediately--obscures current trends, endangering public health.
"When you have big surges in deaths, the deaths by date reported will always show an increase while deaths by date occurred will go down," Salemi said. "Someone could have died yesterday and we may not know about it for a week, or two weeks."
Covid-19 mortality trends show up faster when using death report dates than death dates. The delayed collection of official date of death data is what made it possible for Florida's health department to claim that new Covid-19 deaths were decreasing this month even though the number of deaths reported each day was increasing.
Shivani Patel, a social epidemiologist and assistant professor at Emory University, called the DOH's decision to share temporarily incomplete data that downplays Covid-19 mortality--a change unveiled on August 10 without warning or justification--"extremely problematic."
The covert switch, which came just four days after the DOH requested 300 ventilators from the Biden administration, makes it "look like we're doing better than we are," said Patel, and that could distort public perceptions of the pandemic for weeks.
With infections and hospitalizations also reaching record highs in Florida this month, Patel said that "what we're seeing is an active rise in cases where we can't keep up, an active rise in deaths that, because of using actual date of deaths, has been shifted back in time and we have no idea where we really are."
Tim Hartford, an economist and author of The Data Detective, warned against subtly manipulating presentations of data without adequate explanations, which he called a "statistical sleight of hand."
"The truthful-yet-deceptive framing of numbers is a serious problem," he said. "Covid is a matter of life and death and people deserve to have information that is both accurate and understandable without having to decode it."
Kenny Stancil
Kenny Stancil is senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project and a former staff writer for Common Dreams.
Earlier this month, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' Department of Health deliberately altered how it reported Covid-19 deaths, making it appear as though the public health crisis was waning even as the state's residents endured the most significant escalation in infections since the pandemic began, according to a report published Tuesday by the Miami Herald.
New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that much of the United States is in the midst of a deadly coronavirus surge driven by the ultra-contagious Delta variant.
The Herald's analysis of data from Florida's Department of Health (DOH), however, found that the DeSantis administration responded to the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths by changing the way it reported deaths to the CDC, which generated a misleading reduction in mortality.
The newspaper explained the implications of the DOH's sudden and unacknowledged move:
On Monday, Florida death data would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths reported to the CDC over the previous week had the health department used its former reporting system, the Herald analysis showed. Instead, the Monday update from Florida showed just 46 "new deaths" per day over the previous seven days.
The dramatic difference is due to a small change in the fine print. Until three weeks ago, data collected by DOH and published on the CDC website counted deaths by the date they were recorded--a common method for producing daily stats used by most states. On August 10, Florida switched its methodology and, along with just a handful of other states, began to tally new deaths by the date the person died.
If you chart deaths by Florida's new method, based on date of death, it will generally appear--even during a spike like the present--that deaths are on a recent downslope. That's because it takes time for deaths to be evaluated and death certificates processed. When those deaths finally are tallied, they are assigned to the actual date of death--creating a spike where there once existed a downslope and moving the downslope forward in time.
Tracking mortality by date of death is essential for long-term studies of Covid-19, Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida, told the Herald. But the DOH's decision to abruptly stop counting deaths by date reported--a method that Floridians had come to rely on to see daily patterns immediately--obscures current trends, endangering public health.
"When you have big surges in deaths, the deaths by date reported will always show an increase while deaths by date occurred will go down," Salemi said. "Someone could have died yesterday and we may not know about it for a week, or two weeks."
Covid-19 mortality trends show up faster when using death report dates than death dates. The delayed collection of official date of death data is what made it possible for Florida's health department to claim that new Covid-19 deaths were decreasing this month even though the number of deaths reported each day was increasing.
Shivani Patel, a social epidemiologist and assistant professor at Emory University, called the DOH's decision to share temporarily incomplete data that downplays Covid-19 mortality--a change unveiled on August 10 without warning or justification--"extremely problematic."
The covert switch, which came just four days after the DOH requested 300 ventilators from the Biden administration, makes it "look like we're doing better than we are," said Patel, and that could distort public perceptions of the pandemic for weeks.
With infections and hospitalizations also reaching record highs in Florida this month, Patel said that "what we're seeing is an active rise in cases where we can't keep up, an active rise in deaths that, because of using actual date of deaths, has been shifted back in time and we have no idea where we really are."
Tim Hartford, an economist and author of The Data Detective, warned against subtly manipulating presentations of data without adequate explanations, which he called a "statistical sleight of hand."
"The truthful-yet-deceptive framing of numbers is a serious problem," he said. "Covid is a matter of life and death and people deserve to have information that is both accurate and understandable without having to decode it."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.