Instead of making things “better” the CDC changed the definition of “better.”
TLDR: The CDC changed their metric for “low” COVID-19 counties from
10 cases per 100,000 to 200 cases per 100,000 of the population;
a 20x increase!
On February 25th, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky miraculously announced that “over half of counties — representing over 70% of the U.S. population — are experiencing low or medium COVID-19 Community Levels.”
Accompanying her announcement Walensky casually stated that the CDC had updated the scientific rational and methodological framework it used to monitor the level of COVID-19 in communities.
Like magic the CDC’s new policy suddenly transformed 70 percent of the US population from “High” to “Low/Medium” levels of risk in a single day. The dramatic difference between the two maps below is the kind of misdirection David Blaine is best known for.
Two maps comparing the previous infections metric (top) vs the new hospitalizations metric (bottom).
These two maps are so different only because the CDC has changed their metric for what constitutes “Low.” This change went from 10 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 to 200 cases per 100,000 population. This is kind of hard to understand if you can’t visualize it, in the charts and tables below it’ll become quite apparent what a difference 10 vs 200 can make.
Two tables comparing CDC guidelines old (top) and new (bottom).
The above charts and tables represent the change but doesn’t quite define how the new framework is actually determined. Below the graph clumsily demonstrates how poorly defined the standards for what constitutes “High.”
It would seem that the new CDC methodological framework is determined exclusively by regional hospital capacity. “High” has effectively changed from “could you be infected” to “could you die without a nurse.” Walensky herself confirmed this, during a CDC Media Telebriefing, when answering the following question asked by Dave Mckinley.
You have these metrics where you would establish whether community was high, substantial, moderate low, and there were specific numbers attached, have those numbers changed? ~Dave Mckinley
With regards to where we were in our prior community transmission, those were different metrics. They were based on only cases and percent positivity that led us to those, blue, yellow, orange, red. And so cases will still be a part of it, but we need to recognize that we’re counting cases differently now than we did over a year ago when we established those prior metrics. So now our case thresholds is going to be over 200 per hundred thousand, rather than the 100 per hundred thousand. ~Dr. Walensky
That’s high. ~Dave Mckinley
Again, it’s not, yeah, it’s not just, well, it’s not just cases. It is cases of well as hospitalizations as well as hospital burden. So it’s the, it’s the, intersection of all of those that leads you to a green, yellow, or orange color in these new metrics. ~Dr. Walensky
It would indeed appear that hospital admissions are now the primary, if not exclusive, metric for the level of COVID-19 “transmission.” Clearly the new “everything is low” standard makes no sense if the goal of the CDC is to, you know, control disease.
If the goal of the CDC is to control disease they’re doing a bad job. COVID-19 infections are not improving, even with rates currently going down, rates are still higher than they were in 2020–2021, so instead of trying to make things better they changed the definition of “better.” Another catastrophic mistake by the CDC.
If you look at the CDC COVID-19 Community Profile Report to get a general representative frame of comparison you get the impression that the previous “low” transmission rate is effectively unattainable and should not be the goal of any county.
This is herd immunity by another name.
This framework helps inform public health guidance at the state and local level and provides individuals an understanding of what precautions they may want to take based on their COVID-19 Community Level.
Strategies can be dialed up & dialed down based on community levels. pic.twitter.com/YqSiu6x8n7
— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) February 25, 2022