There are confirmed and probable cases. Confirmed are as described - confirmed by a positive COVID test. Could be a PCR test or other and you can debate the merits of the different test all you want but they are confirmed cases. Probable cases are just that, someone made a determination that a case was most likely to be COVID. Just as with the confirmed cases, you can debate the merits of the observation as much as one wants.
If someone said the actual cases were off by 10% I personally wouldn't argue since nobody really knows. That number would still be directionally correct. If someone said the actual cases were off by 50% I'd not discuss the topic with that person any longer as they were coming at this with a different objective than many. With regards to someone testing positive more than once - again, probably not significant in the macro view.
Not sure what relevance the immigration numbers have on this. The data clearly shows (of late) that the overwhelming majority of cases are from folks who have not been vaccinated. If you could prove that the immigrants that were crossing the border were subsequently traveling to areas where the majority of the residents were not vaccinated then you could probably make a credible argument the surge was a result of immigration crossings or at least contributed to by those crossings. Makes for great news headlines but the correlation/causation argument has never been made because it would be incredibly hard to make.
The border crisis is not a COVID crisis but the media hasn't relied on demonstrable facts for years and clearly they have no intention of starting now.
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