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Re Covid - Can you help me understand what it means or what is happening when a county has a low percent of positive cases but a high rate of transmission? I cannot find information re this specific question anywhere. Thank you so much.
The answer to your question depends partially on what a person defines as a low percent positive. Is 5% low? Also, we can only identify cases of Covid if you test for them. Under circumstances of very high testing volumes you may get very different numbers than when you test very few. The more you test, then the more you identify cases. If you choose to not test, then you won’t find cases, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist it just mean they aren’t being counted.
For example, let’s pretend that we live in a state with 5 million total people and we test 1 million people per day (unrealistic, but for the purposes of illustration) and we detect a “low” 5% positive. That would be 250,000 “confirmed” cases per day! But if we tested just 10,000 people per day (assume we’re a low testing state now) and we detect 50% positive, then that is only 5,000 “confirmed” cases per day. A state that does more testing (proportionate to their population), the closer you will get to the “true” number of cases.
So, states that do not test much can falsely claim that they have very few cases. That is why a lot of scientists look at testing volume, % test positives, AND hospitalizations and deaths. Hospitalizations and deaths are harder to falsify, however some people have tried to categorize some Covid related deaths to other causes such as heart attack or other things so that they can falsely claim they have low case counts.
