As far as questioning the numbers, we didn't even have working tests until several weeks/months into the pandemic. I believe I had covid-19 in January, but have no way of knowing, since we had no tests. I may be one of the millions who had it, but was never tested/counted.

I returned home from international travel in January, where I spent 14 days with sick relatives all of whom had recently traveled internationally, of course I caught what they had. On my way home I spent 10 hours on a plane with a sick seatmate from China. With 104 degree fever and many other symptoms, I went to Urgent Care in my home town and they called the CDC and a PCR nasal swab (the long one) sample was taken -- and a week later, I was told the test was canceled. Whether I didn't meet the narrow criteria for a test, or simply the fact that we had no working tests yet, my sample was never tested.

It took me 10 weeks to recover from my mystery illness. I've never been so sick in my life. All other illnesses were ruled out, so I'm pretty sure I'm one of the millions who had it but with no test result, am not part of the count.

I don't trust the numbers, because I feel they are likely far higher than reported. Mistakes like what is posted above show ineptness, but just shows we can't trust the numbers either way.

I'm not trusting the government testing program that just began this week in Hawaii.

The surgeon general paid a visit to our state last week, and encouraged our leaders to spend the CARES act money on 90,000 covid self administered nasal swab tests, offered to free to our residents, in a drive-through fashion over the next 2 weeks. The tests are then sent off to a mainland lab each day for processing, rather than paying a lab here in our own state.

Turns out the first day of testing, 1,700 of the 5000 test samples were mis-labeled and had to be thrown out so folks had to come back to a testing site, wait in line again.

Then, next day at least 4 people were notified they were positive, who hadn't even taken the test yet. The test is only 90% accurate in the first place.

It is seeming to me that this "surge testing" being offered to various areas is just another way for the government to pay a small lab on the mainland a lot of money for all these tests, and possibly artificially make our positivity rate appear that it's going down, right before the election. I'd be willing to bet that whoever chose the lab to process these tests owns stock in it. With so many mistakes made just in the first week, I don't think many of us here feel confident in the program.

I'm not trusting much at all regarding the numbers, with the government run operations, but the hospitalizations and deaths are sobering.

So, testing didn't begin until March. And the sample might have been stored or backlogged. What's the mystery?