BREAKING NEWS: Florida the epicenter

Florida is the new epicenter of the global Coronavirus pandemic.

The Sunshine state reported more than ten thousand new cases for four consecutive days last week, including a record 11,458 on July 4.

Texas is the runner-up in this dubious contest, with 8,258 cases recorded on the same day. Florida is the runaway leader per capita too. The state has a population of just under 22 million. Texas comes in at a hair under 30 million. Cases are also surging, although not yet as dramatically, in the 38 other states that opened prematurely, especially in Arizona.

Meanwhile, President Trump is trying to avoid blame for his policy of reckless reopening by blaming increased testing and minimizing the seriousness of the disease. The main reason for rising cases is increasing contagion, not increased testing. When you increase testing, you get more cases only when people test positive. The percentage of people tested that come out as positive has been increasing sharply showing that rising cases are not an artifact of more testing.

The biggest and most dangerous of Trump’s lies on COVID-19 is the statement that “99 percent” of infections are harmless. That’s a triple-whopper contradicted by 100 percent of experts, and the kind  of falsehood that reinforces the cavalier attitudes, complacency and carelessness that have led us to the dreadful place where we are. Mark Twain wrote that there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics. This is a damned lie wrapped in a false statistic.