May 29, 2020
May 29, 2020
It was reported today by Chip Brownlee of Alabama Political Reporter that Dr. Scott Harris admitted ADPH has been combining antibody tests in its total test results posted on ADPH's dashboard. https://www.alreporter.com/…/alabama-includes-antibody-tes…/
This is exactly the kind of data manipulation that I feared was happening. In fact, after reading articles in al.com earlier this week that the increase in positive tests was attributable to increased testing, I could not square those statements with the testing data I was seeing, so I wrote to the al.com reporters and asked them to investigate.
Why is this important? Epidemiologists never mix antibody tests and active virus tests because only diagnostic tests attempt to quantify active disease. Antibody tests are notoriously unreliable; many experts have estimated less than half of antibody tests are even accurate. Also, patients who have had both an antibody test and a diagnostic test would be counted twice. No legitimate public health policy can be developed if test data is inflated by mixing test results.
But political advantage can be obtained that way. On May 22, the NYT reported that CDC had done exactly what Dr. Harris has admitted to. https://www.nytimes.com/…/polit…/coronavirus-tests-cdc.html…
The CDC called it a mistake, blamed it on employee fatigue and apologized. Read the NYT article to see what experts had to say.
To think that ADPH admitted the same "mistake" only six days later is, well, hard to process. Could it be that inflated test data is a convenient way to counteract negative national media attention on Alabama's response to the pandemic? If so, that is not only outrageous, it is scandalous