Hayride questions Louisiana Wuhan Virus numbers

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If you’ll remember, this practice of essentially inflating the number of deaths attributed to the virus isn’t just a Louisiana thing. In Italy, the virus hotspot to which Edwards has continuously compared the Bayou State’s outbreak, it’s been revealed that only some 12 percent of fatalities reported as coronavirus deaths can be said to primarily have come from the virus – in the other 88 percent, some other co-morbidity is more likely what killed the patient.

Now we know the Louisiana Department of Health is doing the same thing...

We’re told that legislators who have asked the Governor’s office and LDH have not been able to get a straight answer on a key question – namely, what constitutes a “positive case” of the virus in the LDH’s tally?

There is word that for at least a sizable stretch of the state’s current testing regime, anyone who is very symptomatic of the Wuhan virus and is tested has been counted as a positive case, though that practice might not be the case any longer. If true, that would explain why, until a few days ago, Louisiana was running an astonishingly high ratio of 22 percent positive in its test reporting, more than double the 10 percent ratio nationwide. That number has since settled just under 13 percent, and more recent test results show the state dropping under 10 percent in positive cases.

Are negative tests being dropped out of the positive numbers and being replaced with positives generated by increased testing in order to keep Louisiana’s numbers growing?...

Currently, Louisiana sits at a 3.6 percent death rate from the virus. That’s an astonishingly high number; nationally, the death rate is only 1.5 percent. Louisiana’s neighbors are posting numbers which look nothing like ours; while Louisiana has 83 deaths out of 2,305 reported cases, in Texas, with five times the population, there are 23 deaths out of 1,662 cases, or a 1.4 percent death rate. In Mississippi, which studies have shown is the only state with a more unhealthy population than Louisiana’s, there are just six deaths out of 485 cases (1.2 percent). Florida, where the population is known to skew toward the elderly (and with five times our people), has 29 deaths in 2,484 cases (1.17 percent).

You can bend yourself into knots trying to explain why our numbers are so different than theirs. The easiest explanation is that Louisiana is inflating its death rate by counting people like Jaquan Anderson as coronavirus fatalities.

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