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Thread: Media ignores 90% coronavirus death collapse in country

  1. #1
    Administrator fuego's Avatar
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    Media ignores 90% coronavirus death collapse in country

    On Sunday a major positive milestone was reached for the first time, coronavirus deaths declined by 90% in this country from the high set on April 21st. That's an incredibly positive story about our national battle with the virus. Yet, shockingly, it has received almost no media attention. (UPDATE: On Monday deaths were also down 90% from the April 21st peak, meaning there were two straight days this occurred, again, with almost zero media coverage).

    That's indefensible because this is not complicated data to track down. You can see it yourself on this chart here, on April 21st 2,693 people died of the coronavirus. Yesterday 267 died. Putting that number into perspective, an average of 7200 people died on Sunday of something other than the coronavirus and those deaths received almost no media attention at all.

    That's a monstrous 90% drop in deaths the space of two months, a tremendous sign of positivity which clearly suggests that the worst of the coronavirus outbreak has now passed. But the media mostly ignored it in favor of a continuing embrace of fear porn. (For the coronabros out there, yes Sunday tends to be the lowest day of the week, but if you want to use the seven day moving average instead of Sunday, the data still reflects a 70+% decline in mortality, a similarly wildly positive story.)

    Yet look at all the Monday morning headlines that have been collated by Outkick readers beneath my original tweet featuring the New York Times own Monday morning web headline, which didn't even take note of the collapsing death totals. This is a particularly glaring failure in light of the New York Times electing to make its cover story last month a recitation of people who had died of the coronavirus.

    Almost no mainstream media outlets in the country have made note of the collapsing coronavirus death total in this country.

    Why is that?

    It's certainly not because the media is attempting to share fair and balanced journalism with its audience, it's because they've recognized fear porn drives engagement, even if it isn't reflecting reality. Scaring people to death works. Emotion is the coin of the social media realm and logical analysis of facts is disfavored if it doesn't elicit the same firestorm of social media pandemonium.

    Put simply, the mainstream media doesn't exist to inform any longer, it exists to emote.

    Worse than that, rather than share the actual factual data, they are now selling you stories that are simply not true.

    Rather than talk about the good news — deaths have plummeted across the country over the past two months — the media has focused on states like Florida, Texas, and Arizona, in an effort to sell the narrative of New York like resurgence in those states.

    Only the data doesn't actually support that argument at all.

    Look at the data shared from Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Data which received almost no attention despite the fact that he held a press conference on Friday with the mayor of Miami and then shared his own data to discuss this as well.

    Far from a New York like collapse, the state of Florida has seen the mean age of infected patients dive by thirty years and has fewer hospitalized patients in the ICU and on ventilators than they had in April. Yet most of you are probably just seeing this data for the first time...

    Much more story and charts at the link:

    Media Ignores 90% Coronavirus Death Collapse In Country – Outkick

  2. #2
    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    The authorities are scared of a resurgence of deaths if people relax their behavior too much. In Iran they went from a peak death toll of 158 in one day down to 35 (- 80 %) and now back up to 133, in the space of several months. The peak number isn't dramatic but this demonstrates a possible trend.

    Iran Coronavirus: 212,501 Cases and 9,996 Deaths - Worldometer

    In countries with few restrictions like Sweden and Brazil the death toll is high and keeps being high.

    The site I linked is very detailed but following a visual representation like this, which involves the accumulated death toll, is a good idea :

    Corona-viruset: Status i verden

  3. #3
    Also, I think the U.S. data is complicated by the fact that initially, the virus was affecting mainly the NYC area (where it subsequently declined very significantly), whereas now, the virus is more evenly distributed among the states. Also, deaths lag detection, so new cases today imply additional fatalities several weeks ahead.

    For example, NY's peak daily fatality number was 1025 in April, but was only 32 yesterday. And NJ's peak daily fatality number was 458 in April but was 48 yesterday. So just these two states have accounted for a major portion of the reduction in overall US fatalities.

    But the picture is quite different elsewhere: In California, the peak was 121 in April but was still at 96 yesterday. And daily new cases were around 2000 in April but about 5500 now.

    If a near-90% reduction had been achieved across most of the states, the outlook would be much more positive.

  4. #4
    Senior Member Colonel's Avatar
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    The "daily new cases" numbers are wildly inaccurate, they depend heavily on testing policies and those vary from area to area and also over time.

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