Macabre Venice parade Marks Plague in Coronavirus Shadow

France24 ^

[nickcarraway]

Cloaked in black with their faces hidden by bone-white masks of plague doctors or the dead, Venetians marked a historical scourge in an annual procession held under the shadow of the new coronavirus outbreak.

The macabre march, which commemorates the plague that ravaged the city over four centuries ago, went ahead late Tuesday despite a decision to cancel other Venice carnival events as Italy battles the virus.

[DoughtyOne]

On Monday two days ago, the reporting of the COVID-19 numbers
changed.

Previous to that, the large numbers would be posted together around
17:30 to 18:30 PST. That means that the majority of new cases, deaths,
and the recovered numbers would be spilled together.

On Monday the negative numbers were published at 13:30 and the positive
numbers three hours later at 16:30.

Yesterday the negative numbers were published at 9:30 & 12:30, with the
positive numbers coming in at 17:53.

Today that same format seems to be playing out. Large negative numbers
were reported at 9:30 and 12:30. It remains to be seen when the positive
numbers will show up.

What this means is that the increase in cases shows up starting as
much as eight hours or more before the recovery numbers show up.

This creates a false narrative that things are getting quickly worse.
Then the media runs with that.

To the contrary, by the end of the day these numbers more than balance out,
with the number of active cases shrinking each day.

I think it's a ploy to make this thing look worse than it is, and the
general public won't actually understand how they are being gamed.

Yesterday morning 1,337 new cases were announced at 09:43. At 12:33
that number had grown to 1,881, and that was made public. Not until 17:53
was it released that 2,621 cases had been resolved. At that time it was
reported that in total 2,184 total new cases had been reported during
the day.

Upshot of the day, there were 2,717 cases resolved yesterday,
and after balancing new cases with the resolved cases, there was a drop
in active cases of 494 cases.

I don't believe that is the message that will be broadcast to the public.