[Ads-l] WSJ: harder to catch the disease

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

An article in "The Wall Street Journal" on January 14th discussed
deaths attributable to Covid19. The article contained the following
phrase: "Testing shortages made it harder to catch the disease early
in the pandemic". A simple parse of this phrase would lead many
readers to wonder why a testing shortage would make it harder to
become infected with the coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

I believe that the authors meant to say: "Testing shortages made it
harder to detect the presence of the disease early in the pandemic".
This ambiguity made me think of the colorful term applied to newspaper
headlines: "crash blossom". Would this be considered a "crash blossom"
or is there another vivid term?

Website: The Wall Street Journal
Article: The Covid-19 Death Toll Is Even Worse Than It Looks
Authors:  Paul Overberg, Jon Kamp and Daniel Michaels | Graphics by Lindsay Huth
Timestamp: Jan. 14, 2021 10:07 am ET

[Begin excerpt]
Testing shortages made it harder to catch the disease early in the
pandemic, and some Covid-19 deaths may have been blamed on the flu and
pneumonia instead, said Robert Anderson, chief of the
mortality-statistics branch at the CDC's National Center for Health
Statistics.
[End excerpt]

Garson

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