As Virginia lurches towards Phase One of recovery, Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a piece that everyone should read. It'll make you mad.

The one chart that the Governor has used to make his case for reopening this coming Friday, May 15th, is a 14-day decline in percent of positivity. However, Leonor reports that the State is far below Northam's own testing goal and has inflated the denominator of the percent-of-positivity calculation by including unreliable antibody tests:

Virginia remains far from Gov. Ralph Northam’s goal of 10,000 tests per day and is not meeting the testing goals laid out by leading health researchers. The state’s already low testing numbers are inflated by unreliable antibody testing. And the state’s contact tracing workforce remains below national standards and the state’s own goal.

Deaths are up, positive cases are up, even hospitalizations are up 12% compared to last week. All this while testing—which is crucial to know the context in which to interpret all of these other numbers—lags in almost every way imaginable.

But tell me again how proceeding with Phase One is driven by data not dates?