Agencies Hide Swine Flu Cases

CDC expert says flu outbreak is dying down — for now

The nation’s epidemic of new H1N1 flu may have peaked except in New York, New Jersey and New England, a leading federal health expert said Tuesday.

“In the country as a whole, influenza is starting to decrease,” says Ann Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Seasonal flu is on the decline. Novel H1N1, swine flu, is not. In a classic example of bureaucratic obfuscation, the CDC is now announcing case numbers only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The count on Monday, May 25, was only 212 more than Friday, May 22. Of course, almost none of the state health departments counted over the weekend. The CDC continues to post out of date numbers for California and Wisconsin, two states where case numbers are climbing. They have reported the same number of cases for California since May 18, and made the same error on the Wisconsin count since May 19.

Texas has 1,359 cases while the CDC shows them with 900. The CDC has “lost” 459 cases. Texas will update its total on May 27.

Wisconsin updates its case count every day, Monday through Friday. The CDC has had them with 766 cases since May 19, Today’s case count from the state website is 1,370. That is 604 “lost” cases.

Want more “lost” cases?

California has 672 cases. The CDC has shown 553 cases for the state since May 18. That is 119 cases “lost”. California will not update its state count until May 28.

Massachusetts reports 350 cases today. The CDC shows 238. 112 cases “lost”.

The State of Washington has 517 cases of swine flu according to the CDC. Washington’s weekly report shows 575. That report was posted last Friday. 58 cases “lost”.

By reviewing all the state sites, and using theri numbers where available, we find an additional 1,837 unreported swine flu / novel H1N1 cases through today. That is 27% more than the CDC numbers. There are seven states that have reported numbers 5% or greater than the CDC and three of those are greater than 10% different. There are 581 uncounted cases in the Mexican border states and 715 uncounted cases in the Mid West.

Many state sites report only Monday through Friday. Some sites report weekly. A few, such as Florida, no longer post case numbers to their website.

The outbreak of swine flu / novel H1N1 continues to grow. Publicly available data suggests that the only change has been by reporting agencies; i.e. reducing or ceasing reporting the cases. You cannot believe statements by public health officials that are not backed up by the data.

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Tags: CDC, CDC reported H1N1 cases, CDC reported swine flu cases, CDC reporting errors, h1n1, h1n1 in the united states, Influenza, novel h1n1, Swine Flu, swine flu in the united states

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 10:35 pm and is filed under Original writing, Analysis, Medicine, Influenza, Medicine, Original writing, Medicine, Pandemic, Original writing, Reporting, Medicine, Swine Flu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Comment to “Agencies Hide Swine Flu Cases”

Gardner says:

May 27, 2009 at 1:47 am

What the _ _ _ _ is going on!? All the sudden all the numbers stopped. I have been tracking this since April and it looks like a conspiracy to cover up the real truth. I called the county today (Orange) and demanded they put the case count by city back up. They took it down a week ago. I was mapping all cases and California cases literally stopped! This is total BS. This virus is spreading like wildfire but somehow California is immune….I don’t buy it for a second. Beware Rex 84…

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