Well, from what I read here in Orange County CA, the state forced the county to count people who have tested positive with Antibody tests to now be counted as a positive COVID-19 test, even if the tests were done long ago.
You should check your sources [1]. Every single time someone has claimed that a federal or state government has "forced" someone to inflate COVID numbers, it's been blatant nonsense.
Not calling GP out specifically, but generally asking someone hell-bent on re-opening to check their sources or facts is pointless. They will just go out and find another rationalization. This isn't just about this school--it's happening all across (at least) the USA. We should be coming up with objective, measurable milestones that support re-opening, tracking towards them, reviewing periodically and then making a decision to re-open based on whether the criteria were met.
Instead, people are simply starting with a foregone conclusion of "We must re-open!" and fishing for any nugget that might justify this pre-ordained decision. So far in this thread we've already seen:
1. The cases are not uniformly distributed, therefore it's OK to re-open in areas that currently seem good! [many variants of this one]
2. Cases are spiking but deaths are not up, we should ignore the non-fatal consequences of the disease and re-open!
3. Cases only look like they are up because testing is up, therefore the numbers are in question, so re-open!
4. Governments are conspiring to inflate case numbers, therefore the numbers are in question, so re-open!
We are already starting to see the disastrous effects of prematurely re-opening, but the public just won't accept any story that doesn't end with "...and we re-opened everything as soon as we could!"
Part of calling this stuff out is to not let bad arguments (or outright disinformation) go unchallenged to people who are just reading along and haven't formed an opinion yet.
