If science and data are driving the state’s COVID-19 shutdown orders, as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer contends, it should at least be certain the numbers are right.

As The Detroit News reported Thursday, a key statistic that precipitated a tightening of the northern Michigan economy last month was wrong.

On July 28, Michigan’s chief medical officer, Joneigh Khaldun, reported a spike in the positive test rate for the virus to 3.7%. It had been as low as 2.2% in June, when some restrictions on commerce and social interactions were lifted.

The next day, Whitmer ordered tighter limits on northern Michigan bars and restaurants, and reduced the size of permissible indoor gatherings.

As it turns out, the 3.7% rate was overstated. After a review of the test reports, the state now says the rate was more like 3.4%, closer to the 3% positive test results that health experts believe is tolerable for containing the virus.

As explained in The News’ report, one reason for the adjustment is that a local laboratory working with a health system in Idaho mixed in tallies from that state in the Michigan report that later had to be removed.

Also, all of the lab’s results weren’t getting to the state. So officials had to go back in and add about 40,000 test results by the date a specimen was collected.

Bottom line: Conditions in Michigan were not as dire as it seemed when Whitmer moved to clamp down again.

It’s worth noting that although Michigan has seen surges in the number of positive tests, reported deaths from COVID-19 have not risen at the same pace, and on most days are in the single digits. By comparison, on April 6, during the height of the pandemic, Michigan posted 110 deaths.

It was the deadly nature of the virus, and fears that it would overwhelm the health system, that justified the harsh shutdowns imposed in the spring.

Since then, treatment of COVID-19 patients has become more effective, and the new victims are younger and less likely to die from the virus. Most hospitals in Michigan now have plenty of capacity to handle surges, should they come.

Those are the factors that should be considered before issuing further COVID-19 mandates, rather than testing data that has proven to be unreliable.

That’s borne out by the bad numbers last month. Over a three-week period in July, the positive test rate was previously lowered by three-tenths of a percent, meaning conditions in Michigan were not as bad as they seemed. And yet policy, including whether to reopen schools for in-person learning, was being made based on faulty data that indicated a more severe spike.

Other states have experienced similar problems with test data.

The News quoted Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who called a lack of national standards for tracking and reporting testing “problematic.”

Data also changes depending on who’s compiling the numbers.

COVID Act Now, the nonprofit organization that’s been tracking states’ performance combating the virus, says Michigan is among states seeing “slow disease growth,” the second lowest-risk category. The organization lists Michigan’s seven-day positivity rate at 2.5%.

The University of Michigan comes up with yet another rate, 3.2%.

That inconsistency is worrisome when it is driving life-and-death decisions.

“The danger of government deciding which information is shared and ordering people to close their businesses and stop going to church is obviously very high,” says Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group, who has been critical of the state for the selective use of data.

“The chance of a mistake is always present.”

Michigan is experiencing Depression-era unemployment, and its children face another year of substandard learning in the name of fighting COVID-19.

The state must be certain that bad data isn’t making the situation here worse.

— The Detroit News