Kate Brown's weapon of choice for keeping Oregno masked up and cowering in fear of COVID19 has been the inflated infection rates and death rates by the always dependable PCR test. In her efforts to make that weapon as powerful as possible, she will manipulate it to best serve her needs.

As an example, for the first few months of COVID, the "community infection" statistics were kept in a way that bloated them and gave a false high positivity rate. After a lot of complaining from many people, Kate and Pate finally decided to start publishing legitimate stats As explained in the Daily Dead Fish Wrapper on November 20th, 2020

Under growing scrutiny for its coronavirus testing efforts, the Oregon Health Authority on Friday announced wholesale changes to the way it will quantify tests, dramatically boosting the numbers by counting tests rather than people.

The changes means Oregon will now begin reporting much higher testing numbers while simultaneously cutting the state’s closely watched test positivity rate in half.

States across the country report testing numbers differently, and Oregon since the start of the pandemic has reported its testing numbers based on people tested, not tests conducted. Those statistics revealed the number of Oregonians tested per week had barely budged from highs in July, despite the state this month recording numerous records in coronavirus infections.

But that methodology excluded people who were repeatedly tested and who tested negative, counting only the first time an Oregonian tested negative or positive. That largely had not been a factor until the beginning of October, when the volume of tests completed rose much faster than the number of Oregonians tested.

So in other words, the same people were being tested over and over, which led to a high number of tests, but only one test was actually counter per person, which led to an artificially high positivity rate. That's important, because that was the number Kate used to justify lockdowns and education destruction (aka shuttering schools). With the changes, the positivity rate was calculated based on the actual number of tests given, when made for a much lower rate. However, significant damage had already been done by Kate to our economy and kids.

And then last week came word that Kate and Pat are changing statistic reporting, and doing it in a way that hides helpful data. If anything, you have to give them credit for consistency.

As explained yet again by the Daily Dead Fish Wrapper

The Oregon Health Authority on Wednesday disclosed 731 new coronavirus cases and 20 more deaths as state officials announced they would stop providing detailed death summaries.

State officials throughout the pandemic divulged basic biographical information for each COVID-19 fatality, including a person’s age, county, location of death, date of a positive coronavirus test, date of death and general presence of underlying health conditions.

That was data that was valuable in showing that the only people dying from the virus were older than 70, but that doesn't help them in instilling fear that everyone could die for COVID19.

But of course, they're not trying to hide anything; it's just too hard for OHA employees to do their jobs.

But without warning the agency announced that would end, effective Wednesday, because it had become too onerous for state epidemiologists who have been providing that information on a daily basis for 10 months.

Of course the DDFW hits them from the left, accusing OHA of trying to hide who got vaccinations when they shouldn't have.

Ending detailed death descriptions will make it difficult to know with precision how many elderly Oregonians test positive for coronavirus and subsequently die during the period when Brown allowed teachers to receive vaccines ahead of seniors.

But now going forward, we only get nicely sanitized data that hides the details. But hey, it's actually better, according to the alphabet bureaucrats.

The state on Wednesday instead unveiled a new data dashboard that includes summary details about the underlying health conditions of those who have died with COVID-19. That’s something the agency previously declined to disclose when requested five months ago by The Oregonian/OregonLive, saying the data wasn’t useful and created confusion when it had been previously released.

Robb Cowie, a spokesman for the Oregon Health Authority, said the decision to stop reporting detailed death information is “a capacity issue” for state officials and insisted the newly created data page, with a “composite picture, is ultimately more telling.”

On its last day of detailed reporting, Oregon disclosed the death of a 27-year-old woman from Hood River County with no underlying health conditions who died Jan. 23 at Oregon Health & Science University.

That level of detail will be whitewashed going forward. The death would be listed online as someone age 20 to 29, with no way to know the person’s county, gender, date of a positive coronavirus test, date of death, if the person died at home or in a hospital, or if the person had underlying health conditions.

Oregon will disclose deaths only in aggregate by age range, by county and by gender.

Back at the beginning in March, Kate was pressured to actually provide data with value, and she actually did:

State officials began providing detailed information with the first death March 14. Facing concerns about inadequate transparency on other coronavirus data, Gov. Kate Brown later that month said she instructed the health authority to “share all COVID-19 information with the public that does not compromise patient privacy.”

However, as Kate has previously demonstrated, transparency is not exactly her strong suit, and so now we are back to whitewashed, sanitized data with much less value.