There’s an old saying in business: You measure what you value.

But when the measurements are sloppy and ill-timed, they don’t have much value at all.

So it is, apparently, with Texas’ COVID-19 case numbers.

State health officials realized recently that they have hundreds of thousands of backlogged cases because of a confluence of errors and ill-preparedness. So, counties are learning of virus cases from June and July, scrambling our understanding of where various areas are in the pandemic and far too late to do any effective contact tracing. In Tarrant County alone, it’s thousands of undercounted cases.

Nearly six months into the pandemic, and Texas health officials still don’t have a firm grasp on the basic math of COVID-19. How pathetic.

Gov. Greg Abbott, visiting Fort Worth to unveil a police-funding initiative, said the backlog was an “ongoing legacy-based issue” exacerbated by private labs slowly processing tests. All will be well in a manner of days, he assured.

To translate, the Department of State Health Services was not built to receive, verify and track a pandemic. As it tried to ramp up, Quest Diagnostic officials contend, apparently the state installed a new server and didn’t tell private labs, causing hundreds of thousands of cases to fall into a digital void.

There were signs for years that the state’s preparedness for a pandemic was a potential problem for years, but efforts in the Legislature to fix it stalled. Texas is far from alone, too, as many states are struggling to track the disease. And anyone who’s worked with raw data can tell you that there are always coding errors, false signals and incomplete figures to overcome. Part of the confusion stems from so many of us watching the data unfold in real time.

So, it’s understandable that the department might have been initially overwhelmed. But that’s no excuse for the continued problems and delays.

Hugely consequential decisions over both life and the economy hang in the balance. County officials responsible for shutdown orders and other public health matters are increasingly dismissing the state data as unreliable. Collin County officials went so far as to post a stark warning on their online data dashboard that the county “has no confidence in the data” it’s posting.

Take the positivity rate of tests. That’s a metric that Abbott himself has identified as key to determining what level of economic activity is safe. It spiked weeks ago, alarming health experts, then seemed to have fallen closer to 10 percent, an important threshold. But the Houston Chronicle reported Thursday that because of the backlog and differences in how counties report cases, state health officials have no way to know the actual positivity rate.

It’s quite possible, too, that the measurement of COVID-19’s ultimate cost — the number of deaths — falls short, too. Texas has recorded more than 10,000 fatalities, but, as in other states and nationwide, epidemiologists are seeing a bigger spike in the number of deaths than would normally be expected. Some might be explained by other causes — such as people not seeking treatment for dangerous health conditions out of fear of the virus — but there’s almost certainly more pandemic deaths than recognized in the official stats.

So, what’s the real state of the pandemic? Locally, Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley said at Tuesday’s Commissioners Court meeting that the county has about 7,300 active cases, down from 12,000 a few weeks ago. That’s encouraging but far from a complete victory.

“Don’t let up,” Whitley said. “Wear the mask, keep wearing the mask, keep social distancing, washing the hands. If we relax, school’s starting, we’re going to blow these numbers up again.”

Hospital data, thankfully, remains more reliable and consistent. The highest priority is still controlling the disease enough that our healthcare systems can deal with it.

For the state, fixing the data must be the highest priority. We need accurate information, now and going forward, as we approach difficult, complex decisions about businesses, schools and other parts of our lives. Flying blind is going to cost more lives.

Going forward, the state auditor’s office should do a deep dive on what went wrong with the data. And the Legislature, largely sidelined in COVID-19 decision-making because it’s out of session, needs to prepare for vigorous oversight of the health department and new bills to ensure Texas is ready for the next inevitable pandemic.

Because we weren’t ready for this one. And thanks to botched data, we still don’t know how badly that’s hurting Texas.

COVID-19 Hospitalizations over Time

Coronavirus daily hospitalization counts in Texas and the larger Trauma Service Areas, beginning April 8, 2020. Data provided by Texas Health and Human Services.

Steve Wilson swilson@star-telegram.com