Testing in Texas

Every morning I read the news on my Washington Post app and also look at their United States Covid statistics. 

One thing I've been noticing is Texas is not doing well in testing lately.

The past few weeks, our percent positive rate had been going down. Now it wasn't going down to the decent number that says, Yay! Y'all did good. You can go back to school now!  But it was getting lower.

I'm looking at the stats now. 

So....

In the middle of June, we had a positivity rate of about 6-7 percent. That seems really good compared to what we'd have later...and now.

By the end of June, we were in the 13-14 percent range.

It kept rising.

In the middle of July, we were in a 16-17 percent range.

Then it started going down.

By the end of July, we were back to about 12-13 percent. 

On August 1, we started rising again.

And we keep going up and up.

The Texas dashboard, I'm looking at now, says our positivity rate on August 10 was 24%. 

Oh! The Washington Post says the same thing. I thought they had a lower number. But maybe after I read it this morning, they updated the info.  

24% is awfully high.

A high positivity rate means you have a lot of people with the virus or you're not testing enough.  OR it could be both.

I'm guessing with Texas, it's both.

But I KNOW we're not testing enough.

Looking at the Washington Post's stats for the last 7 days.

California has done the most tests—881,000. New York has done the second most—487,000.

The most populous state after California is Texas NOT NewYork. So Texas should have the next highest number of tests after California.

But we don't. 

Five other states have had more tests than Texas: California, New York, Illinois, Florida, and Georgia. 

Texas has done only 204,000 tests in the last 7 days 

The question is WHY is testing so shitty here?

Do we not have enough tests?

Do we not have enough of what's needed to process the tests?

Or are there powerful people following the Donald Trump idea that more testing makes a place look bad? And if that's the case...is it working for some people? 

Are there people looking at our case count and thinking...hey, we've been doing better lately? Do they ignore the positivity rate and just look at the case counts?

Although, we really aren't looking good in terms of new cases.

In terms of case counts for the last 7 days, Texas is doing the third worse.

California has had 50,000 new cases.

Florida has had 48,000 new cases.

Texas has had 41,000 new cases.

BUT.....

I'm betting if Texas came in second in terms of number of tests done, they'd probably be coming in first or second with new cases.

In terms of new deaths for the past 7 days, we come in first.

We've had 1213 deaths, Florida has had 1147.

I'm looking back at tests to see the totals rather than the last 7 days.

In terms of that, things are less shameful. We come in third.  New York comes before us. It makes sense, though, because New York had the huge outbreak earlier. 

No...I'm wrong.

I hear Tim arguing with me in my head.

And Tim-in-my head would be right.

If Texas had been doing as much testing as New York back in the early days of the pandemic, then we would have likely escaped all the cases and deaths we ended up having.

And even though, New York has been doing much better lately—less new deaths and less new cases, they are still doing a ton of tests. 

Texas has a larger population than New York. Texas has a bigger current outbreak than New York. But New York is doing more testing. 

Texas has a positivity rate of 24%.

New York has a positivity rate of 1%.

Texas has 7200 people hospitalized with Covid. New York has 540.

Texas has had 40,733 (known!) new cases of Covid in the last 7 days. New York has had 3800.

Now I have Trump supporting family members arguing with me in my brain.

They're loudly declaring that New York has had close to 30,000 deaths and it's all the fault of the awful Democratic governor and mayor.

Texas has had only 8700 deaths.

What I would say to them is let's not boast about our low death numbers until this is all over.

Although that being said....the same goes for New York.

Things are much better there now.

But I'm starting to understand there are no definite successes or uplifting finales in this Covid story.  What's going well today can be a whole different story in the near future.

Read my novel: The Dead are Online