How accurate are the states’ COVID numbers? Well, where Tennessee is concerned, they’re at least one off.

As reported by The Daily Wire, a man in music city says he received a call last week about his virus. The state was checking up, since he’d tested positive.

But…he hadn’t.

Brock Ballou (cool name) told cowboy town’s News4 he’d been expecting a contact tracer call, given that a coworker had tested positive for the Wuhan flu.

But he got a surprise:

“She specifically said – I’m looking at it right here – you tested positive – this is a follow up call to see how your symptoms are.”

The guy had never even taken a test.

WSMV asked Brock — was he certain he heard her correctly?

Yep:

“I’m 100 percent sure that’s what she said, she was looking right at it. She told me I’m in the system – ‘looking right at it that you’re showing positive.’”

And that wasn’t the end. He received more calls across the next few days.

“[The contact tracer] said, ‘I’m still seeing that you’re positive. Courtesy call – checking your symptoms.'”

Was it a prank? Not according to the station — it claims to have confirmed that all three phone numbers from Brock’s incoming COVID confusion were indeed from the Tennessee Department of Health.

The Department’s investigating the error, but a spokeswoman clarified she’s not worried about accuracy:

“I can also tell you there is no concern with our count of cases in regard to our reporting of those who test positive. Those entries are based on lab results, not on information provided from the monitoring team.”

It should be noted that Brock says the state told him his calls actually came from a third-party contractor.

But from whom did they get his number?

On the tally-error front otherwise, as covered by RedState’s Bonchie, in Florida, a man recently died in a motorcycle crash.

+1 to the virus’s death toll.

And here’s a head-scratcher, from RS contributor Brad Slager July 14th:

Local news channel Fox 35 in Orlando pored through the individual reports from labs across the state and found that an alarming number of these clinics are reporting 100% positive results with coronavirus tests. This defies the running averages seen in most areas, which typically are 85-90% lower. The station contacted a number of the clinics reporting these wildly high figures with one of them announcing that their report of 98% positive results should have in fact been only 9.4%.

So what are the nation’s stats? The answer, for some, may be clear as mud.

Want the dirt on one more goof? Here’s TDW:

It was uncovered that Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center’s reported positivity rate of 76% was actually around 6%, a spokesperson for the center revealed. FOX 35 added, “Orlando Health’s positivity rate is only 9.4 percent, not 98 percent as in the report.”

Well, at least we still have one surety about the statistics: When it comes to the number of Americans who’ve contracted the coronavirus, it’s best not to be one of them.

Stay safe, RedStaters.

-ALEX

See more pieces from me:

When Washington Classrooms Reopen, They’ll Favor ‘Students Furthest From Educational Justice’ and ‘Students of Color’

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