MSM reporting of US COVID-19 mortality rate: An exercise in 'How to Lie with Statistics'

May 26, 2020 By Carol Brown

A book published 66 years ago and still in print is an essential reference for understanding most of the data that you see about the pandemic afflicting the world today.  Written by Darrell Huff and illustrated by Irving Geis, How to Lie With Statistics, is both sardonic and a serious lesson in the abuse of math for propaganda. Whether or not it was studied by our Trump-hating media anxious to make the U.S. look bad, some of its lessons are being employed.

A few days ago, we learned that the mortality rate from the coronavirus is lower than touted by the "experts."  Much lower.  As in, similar to the season flu.

Now, thanks (again) to Matt Margolis at PJ Media, we see that the United States has a comparatively low mortality rate. But downstate New York has the worst.

Curiously, when the media hounded Trump for weeks about testing, they kept screaming about "per capita" testing rates compared to South Korea. But now you hear not a word about "per capita" rates when it comes to mortality.

Why?

Because the hard numbers make the United States look as though it's fared much worse than the rest of the world. That's because idiots in the mainstream media lack the skill or the will to apply basic math. As Margolis notes, it's quite easy to see that we've done an incredible job.

The first list uses data from May 24 and shows total deaths of the ten hardest-hit countries. As you can see, using raw numbers, the United States appears to have fared the worst as countries are ranked in descending order. 

1.USA (96,046)
 2.UK (36,757)
3.Italy (32,735)
4.Spain (28.678)
5.France (28,218)
6.Brazil (22,013)
7.Belgium (9,280)
8.Germany (8,275)
9.Iran (7,417)
10.Netherlands (5,841)

But when Margolis adjusts the numbers to reflect per capita rates, the death rate per million people changes dramatically, as noted below.  You can see that we drop way down on the list.

1.Belgium (791.76)
2.Spain (573.38)
3.UK (558.95)
4.Italy (524.58)
5.France (415.90)
6.Sweden (391.87)
7.Netherlands (338.01)
8.Ireland (309.86)
9.USA  (288.74)
10.Switzerland (226.80)

Then Margolis does one final calculation. ................To Read More........