BLOODY HELL—Trump’s CMS is now changing #COVID19 positivity ratings & muzzling bad numbers. How? If a rural county has <20 tests over 14 days, it will now ALWAYS be “green”—*regardless of positivity*! Result: more ‘green’ & lower nursing home testing.
http://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-updates-covid-19-testing-methodology-nursing-homes

2) Moreover, “Counties with both <500 tests & <2,000 tests per 100k residents, and greater than 10 percent positivity over 14 days – which would have been “RED” under the previous methodology—will move to “yellow.”” again, makes it rosier & lowers nursing testing requirements

3) Under CMS rules, “nursing homes must test staff at a frequency of once monthly if the facility’s county positivity rate is <5% positivity. Staff testing frequency increases to once weekly if county positivity rate is 5-10%; twice weekly if the county positivity rate >10%.”

4) CMS claims governors of rural states complained “rural counties had seemingly high comparative positivity rates as a result of low amounts of testing, rather than actual positivity in the community.” while valid concern, it makes no sense to automatically rate them “Green”!

5) If rural state governors (read: Trump state governors) want to protect their community and nursing home residents, TESTING MORE is always better. But under these new rules, it allows them to test less — as if low positivity. This does NOT serve nursing home residents well.

6) As a matter of fact, rural America has a large number of retirees and nursing homes. And as a consequence, this with further depress testing in these high risk areas. In fact, rural America has huge upswings and new records. We need MORE rural testing not less. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1309848293728452612

7) And we know nursing homes are among the HIGHEST RISK outbreak clusters. So why the hell would Trump WH want to tests nursing home residents and staff LESS?!?! Like for crying out loud!!! I pay taxes so that we protect our Medicare seniors and Medicaid nursing resident damnit!

8) in the very least, don’t simply default rural counties rating to a rosy “green” — make it “grey” color and test more to find out what the true situation is, and still cautiously test nursing homes. You can never be too careful with nursing homes. We are talking LIVES at risk.