Yesterday, I was on the phone with a good friend who asked me what I thought about the rise in corona virus cases in the states that had relaxed restrictions. When I asked him what he meant, he told me of three states about which he had just heard reports of rising cases after shutdown restrictions were relaxed. I suggested that we check the actual figures. I opened the data at the COVID Tracking Project, a site that four times daily updates the reports from the state public health offices regarding numbers of tests, positive and negative results, hospitalizations (for some states) and deaths, among other things. We checked all three states looking at the number of new cases for each of the last three weeks. We used weeks rather than days since the number of tests reported can vary from day to day (more on weekdays than weekends, for example) but by using the week, that smooths out the numbers. What we found was that there was no rise in new cases in any of the states for which my friend had heard reports of rises. We also found that the number of tests being performed in each of the three states was substantially increasing week by week. Higher numbers of tests should show a rising number of new cases even if the level of infection was staying constant, but the actual number of new cases was not rising.
So how can the media report rising cases due to relaxation of restrictions in particular states when the state health department figures -- the most accurate source available regarding the virus in that state -- are showing the opposite? It makes one wonder if the reporters realize that they are publishing misinformation or if they are so slipshod in their efforts that they just report what they expect to be true in accordance with their accepted narratives. In either case, it does make clear that there's no honesty in the media.
The US media seems to be coming to resemble the dishonest media of the old Soviet Union. There was a saying during Soviet days about the two main newspapers Izvestia (which means News) and Pravda (which means Truth) that "in Pravda (Truth), there is no news, and in Izvestia (News) there is no truth."
So how can the media report rising cases due to relaxation of restrictions in particular states when the state health department figures -- the most accurate source available regarding the virus in that state -- are showing the opposite? It makes one wonder if the reporters realize that they are publishing misinformation or if they are so slipshod in their efforts that they just report what they expect to be true in accordance with their accepted narratives. In either case, it does make clear that there's no honesty in the media.
The US media seems to be coming to resemble the dishonest media of the old Soviet Union. There was a saying during Soviet days about the two main newspapers Izvestia (which means News) and Pravda (which means Truth) that "in Pravda (Truth), there is no news, and in Izvestia (News) there is no truth."
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