Statistics purporting to report the number of COVID-19 "recoveries" (past cases who have recovered) are the worst of many questionable statistics the press cites from Johns Hopkins.
"As of 7:40am Central time on Monday, July 13th, that number [of recoveries] stands at 1,006,326. That’s out of 3,304,942 confirmed cases since the pandemic began."
So, what happened to the other 2,286,616?
"Only" 138,000 of them died, so that apparently leaves us with 2.16 million active cases either walking about or overflowing the nation's hospitals and dying in the streets. The implied 2.16M "confirmed cases" who have tested positive but not recovered is obvious nonsense. In fact, all alleged statistics about the number of recoveries are nonsense.
Worldometer says 1.6 million Americans have recovered, not just 1 million. That seems a happier made-up number but it's still fiction.
That fake 1.6 million figure is reproduced by Statista, damaging their credibility too.
Nobody could possibly know how many people have been infected (since few were tested until recently) but we do know that most cases are so mild that people stay home to recover without notifying doctors or hospitals.
Since meaningful recovery statistics are impossible, many states don't bother to try. Those that do mainly rely on reports from some (not all) hospitals, which is a tiny fraction of those infected or recovered elsewhere. The linked article admits, "Recovery numbers in Florida and Georgia are unavailable at this time, but the 25,783 recoveries are reported for the state of Alabama."
Florida and Georgia aren't all that's missing, but it's enough to make the national count truly ridiculous.
The John Hopkins team mostly consists of young engineers and techies. But they really should stop pushing numbers this awful, and also include an apologetic explanation of why they stopped.
