About Those CDC Data
To the editor:
Your June 10 Letter from the Editor [“The CDC’s Garbage Data”] could have benefited from more far-reaching explanatory and investigative journalism.
Like all of the Centers for Disease Control systems that accumulate and make available online our nation’s disease-related incidence data, the Covid disease tracker primarily relies on public health agencies to provide those data. The issue cited in your letter is the disparity between the CDC-published data for Barnstable County and those listed by the Mass. Dept. of Public Health.
Municipalities, with underfunded public health resources, have had to scramble to expand reporting networks in order to provide timely and trustable data to the CDC. You could have sought an explanation for the reporting disparity from the local sources of the data, the Barnstable County Health Dept., or the Mass. Dept. of Public Health. What data went to the CDC and when?
You have likely identified a problem in the reporting of Covid vaccination prevalence. Should the response be to play into the “deep state” conspiracy theory trope by insinuating a federal agency is peddling “garbage,” or should it be to do some journalistic digging and try to figure out what’s really happening?
Ronald R. Fichtner
North Truro
The writer, a retired CDC epidemiologist and administrator, is one of the Docs for Truro Safe Water.
What a Good Reporter Does
To the editor:
“The CDC’s Garbage Data” [June 10, page A2] pointed out that the Covid Data Tracker of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention curiously reported that only 4.1 percent of the total population of Barnstable County had been fully vaccinated.
Paul Benson did what a good reporter should do: he consulted another source. The Mass. Dept. of Public Health (DPH), he found, reported that 62 percent of Barnstable County residents had been fully vaccinated.
As a retired academic physician, I have explored the discrepancies in the reported vaccination rates. For 10 of the 14 Mass. counties, the differences between the CDC (June 11) and DPH (June 8) rates for total population fully vaccinated were plus or minus 5 percent. For Barnstable, Berkshire, Dukes, and Nantucket counties, however, the differences were 60, 14, 76, and 78 percent, respectively. The CDC percentages were lower for all four.
According to the DPH, as of June 8, 64 percent of all individuals and 70 percent of eligible individuals age 12 or older having a resident address in Barnstable County were fully vaccinated. Those rates were the third highest in the state, exceeded only by Dukes and Nantucket counties.
Identifying the exact source of the data discrepancies would require access to the CDC’s and DPH’s raw data, a tall order for any news organization, especially a small one.
Ronald A. Gabel, M.D.
Yarmouth Port
The writer is a retired anesthesiologist.
The Circus Is Still Here
To the editor:
Your June 17 article titled “At Flag Day Event, Trump Flags Outwave Stars and Stripes” [page A6] reminded me of this observation by the late great George Carlin: “Just ’cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.”
I miss George Carlin.
Mike Rice
Wellfleet
Wellfleet to the Rescue
To the editor:
My two oldest friends live in Wellfleet. I came for a visit to clear my head after writing a book chapter. I went early-morning bike riding with my buddy, David Agger, who was going trail running. I don’t mountain bike a lot, but I rode while he ran.
We were just starting out when I looked down to fix my bike computer, and — oops! Tree!
David saw my head and face injuries and called 911.
It was right at the shift change, so two crews came from Wellfleet Fire and Rescue. The on shift took care of me. The coming-on shift helped, then went back to the station while the on shift stabilized me and got me to Hyannis in record time. They were amazing, keeping me awake and alert.
I want to thank the professional men and women of the Wellfleet Fire Dept. for their rapid response and remarkable service. I bought them a big platter of sandwiches the next day!
David Pines
Galena, Md.
