The stats are crap.
NYS counts probables as new cases. Repeat positives of the same patient as new cases.
And don’t get me started about the lack of transparency regarding the cycle threshold/s labs in NYS are using.
The stats are freaking useless from a public health standpoint.
But then this was NEVER about public health.
We have the same situation in Washington State. Many people who are not sick are required to get a test because of their job, they want to take a trip, or were in contact with someone who tested positive. It is well known that the most popular test available has an extremely high false positive rate... Every positive test result is counted here as a “new case”. If like Elon Musk, the person decides to get tested a 2nd time on the same day to confirm their results and the second test comes back negative, this does not negate the results of the first test in the eyes of the government, they are still considered a new case. If like Elon Musk they get another test on the same day and it comes back positive, they are now counted as two cases. If they get another test the same day and again like Elon Musk it comes back negative, the person is still considered two cases and they are still required to be quarantined for two weeks and then get another test. If the test two weeks later comes back positive they are considered to be a third case.
It is all government mandated madness. If we tested people over and over and over again for the flu and used flaky test results to determine how bad the “pandemic” was in the same way... we would get the same type of results. Nonsensical hysteria can be manufactured by this means over any contagious pathogen. I thought that this would all end after the election, but Covid is now being used to keep the public's attention off of the massive fraud that took place. We are now into the cyclic flu season... in reality it is probably not much if any worse than normal, but how would anyone be able to gauge when the goal of those keeping track of the numbers are using nonsensical accounting methods?