By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.
COVID-19 data are and have been all over the map since this entire mess gained
steam earlier this year. It has gotten to the point that any “numbers” presented as news are suspect at best and fraudulent at worst. Is this media incompetence or malpractice? Ignorant or deliberate?
Fox News ran a constant side bar in the early days of the pandemic, with U.S. death counts, much in the way cable news business shows run a ticker of the Dow or S&P 500. How morbid, but it provided fodder for
media talking heads to run around like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, waving their arms and screaming in panic.
Now that death counts are dropping to the point that they blend in with
normal birth and death statistics, the media have predictably pivoted to
case counts as their new hair-on-fire statistic to stoke fear, keep the
economy shut down, and hopefully banish their nemesis back to the land
of Mordor, also known as Mar-a-Lago.
Total
cases are interesting but largely irrelevant without context. And
context is anathema to most journalists and media outlets, who prefer
the opposite approach, with out-of-context snippets and soundbites, as they did last week with White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnaney..............
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