EDITORIAL: In the war on covid, late data loses battles
May 11—Whenever you are dealing with important, measurable information, you have to know that it's accurate. Sometimes that means knowing that size and weight are the same from one researcher to the next. Sometimes it means knowing that a definition is the same across the board.
And sometimes it means knowing that today's numbers are actually today's numbers.
That is particularly important when you are dealing with numbers that are changing over time, like the covid-19 infection information.
The coronavirus pandemic data requires constant attention to see how the disease is spreading, how responses are affecting it, how the vaccine is working and when a new wave is cresting. To date, there have been 158 million cases worldwide, 32.7 million cases in the U.S. and 1.1 million cases in Pennsylvania.
To get a handle on how the disease is moving means tracking those numbers every day. The figures are averaged across time in rolling seven-day averages to smooth out the small spikes and valleys and give more consistent pictures of ups and downs.
But what happens when a large pool of numbers drops all at once?
On Wednesday, Westmoreland County's numbers were flooded with 143 new cases —
0.429% of the county's positive cases for the last 14 months. Except they weren't Wednesday's numbers, or even May's numbers or even 2021's. They came from a data dump from a single lab. Some of information dated as far back as the start of the pandemic.
It is not the first time such a data dump has occurred. They have been criticized for almost a year. Allegheny County faced a similar spike in April with 1,321 cases reported in one day.
The problem with these isn't that the data is inaccurate. A positive is a positive regardless of when it occurred.
However the timing of cases is important context in a pandemic. It is as vital as up-to-date information about troop positions in a war. While a general might appreciate knowing where the enemy was camped, he would probably find the information more useful if it was where they were camped today.
"Given the scale of the pandemic and large increase in tests, some facilities struggle with finding the resources to create files using the appropriate standardized file formats and terminology," said Maggi Barton, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Health.
This was understandable in 2020. Now, in 2021, it seems like a problem that should have been addressed.
Federal and state authorities have waged war against disinformation and misrepresentation of facts. If the facts are to be trusted, they need to be timely.
Pennsylvania — and other states — need to demand more efficiency in the reporting process, and the federal government should compel and support the labs in achieving that.
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