Just another tactic to hide their numbers.
If you have been watching or monitoring any of the dashboards that are reporting coronavirus cases, you probably have noticed a difference in what one dashboard says from another. I have also been diligently monitoring these dashboards, as well as comparing what is being reported in counties and how it compares.
Living Blue in Texas has addressed the reporting issues with the state of Texas on our blog, more than once. Not only has Texas lied and taken measures to intentionally hide the true number of coronavirus cases, but it appears that they have found a new way to under report the numbers.
Which coronavirus dashboard is most accurate?
I think the most accurate dashboard reporting coronavirus cases has fluctuated, the Worldmeters Dashboard appears to currently be the most accurate and in-line with what counties are reporting.
Take a look at these comparisons, as of 5/14 at 2:30pm.
Where is each dashboard getting their numbers?
The Texas DSHS is getting the numbers reported to them directly from the counties. John Hopkins gets its data from the COVID Tracking Project. Worldmeters says it’s getting it’s data directly from the counties, they could be doing this manually with a workforce, but likely they made some type of data-scraping software which does this for them.
How does this data compare on a county level?
Today, I went through the counties with the top 10 highest reporting coronavirus cases, then compared them with what each county is reporting. None of them were completely accurate, however, look at each one compared to Texas.
From the County:
From the State:
John Hopkins:
Worldmeters:
Notice that both Worldmeters and John Hopkins match the number being reported by Harris County, while the state is reporting 205 less. While none of them match the Dallas County numbers, that’s because Dallas County just updated their report at 2:30 pm. And while John Hopkins and Worldmeters are still reporting yesterday’s numbers, they will likely catch it up in a few hours. However, the state is an entire two days behind now. At 2:00 pm on Thursday, the state is reporting Tuesday’s numbers, which is why Dallas County is reporting 478 more cases than the state is reporting.
It’s worse than that.
If you start going through, county-by-county, you will notice when you get to the smaller counties, that have a smaller amount of cases, you will start to notice the state hasn’t updated some of them in a week.
A change to the reporting time.
As I have been monitoring these numbers state-wide for weeks now, Texas has explicitly said on their dashboard the dashboard will be updated daily at 12:00 pm. However, on Monday, that changed. On Monday, the dashboard said they will be updating it by 3:30 pm. Yet, in the last few days, the numbers have been updated around 5:00 pm.
When does each county update its reporting coronavirus cases?
While it varies from county to county, almost all of them are reporting in the afternoon. Dallas County updates its reports at 2:00, Harris County at 4:00, and so on.
What Texas is now doing is reporting those an entire 24 hours later. This week, by the time Texas has been reporting the updated number, it is a full 2 days behind what each county reports. When Texas finally gets around to reporting the numbers, then it will be 1 day behind. Until the next day when there is that two-day lag again.
Why is Texas reporting coronavirus cases this way?
All any of us can do is speculate, I can call their communications office and get whatever scripted answer they’ve been instructed to tell the press, or we can look at their past record.
Texas is still not including the majority of the coronavirus cases in the prisons. Which as of yesterday at 4:30 pm, was 1,775 positives.
The state is still hiding from us the nursing home outbreaks.
Greg Abbott has lied to us repeatedly about access to testing, the coronavirus case number, and the curve.
Is Texas intentionally lagging their numbers to give Greg Abbott enough time to respond, or come up with a good lie to explain a jump in numbers?
Are they delaying reporting coronavirus cases by a day to try and manipulate the numbers, (like skipping on reporting on smaller counties for a week), in order to make the numbers seem smaller?
More questions than answers.
The only thing that remains clear is that Greg Abbott and the Department of Health and Human Services are not being honest, transparent, and upfront.
Abbott’s failure in leadership through this entire pandemic is not only apparent, but in the long run, will cost Texans their lives. I hope none of you forget this when he’s up for reelection again.
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