In June of 1944 Operation Titanic had 10 soldiers of the Allied Air Service parachute over the French countryside along with 500 "ruperts." Ruperts were dummies, fabric stuffed with straw and sand tossed from the airplanes along with the soldiers. They were equipped with incendiary devices so that, upon impact, they ignited, leaving no trace that they were decoys.
It gave the illusion of an invasion far from where the actual invasion was taking place, which was Normandy. The Germans were duly deceived, diverted their resources, and this deception was decisive in making the Normandy invasion ultimately successful.
Intentional deceptions such as this have been part and parcel to warfare for centuries. These deceptions have often been the deciding factor in determining the outcome of battle.
The war against Covid-19 is no exception. Language around Covid-19 is infused with war metaphors. Time Magazine explains to us "Why the U.S. Is Losing the War on COVID-19," while the NYTimes followed up to tell us "How America Lost the War on Covid-19." In this war, as with Vietnam, we have two related "body counts" to help us understand just how badly we are losing to this viral enemy.
The first count is the cumulative deaths caused by Covid-19. The US recently crossed the "grim mile mark" of 200,000 deaths due to the disease. It is a tragic number of deaths, to be sure. But we can also be sure that, as an infectious disease, the cumulative number of deaths will certainly continue to rise into the indefinite future. No one knows what the efficacy will be of any future vaccine, but Dr. Fauci is hoping for at least 75%. In any case, there will always be unfortunate deaths to add to the cumulative death number. All infectious diseases, and in fact all potentially fatal diseases, are the same in this regard.
No one is anticipating complete eradication of Covid-19. This disease is expected to reach a background level, still infectious and occasionally deadly, but not epidemic. Cumulative deaths will continue to rise. The media will surely continue to toll that ominous bell because it carries the gravity of the situation like no other statistic.
The second count used by the media daily is "new cases." These new cases are telling us just how rapidly this virus is disseminating through the population and is used as what we can expect as a surrogate marker for future deaths. Slowing the rise of new cases and squashing any "hotspots" and "outbreaks" of new case clusters is a prime motive behind essentially all social measures, e.g. mask mandates, social distancing, and business closures. For this reason, it is essential that we understand what a new case actually indicates. And to understand that, we first have to examine polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the laboratory technique used to diagnose a case.