COVID Panic Porn

Project Veritas somehow managed to get a CNN executive to admit that they used COVID-19 trackers to induce fear, because fear sells.  For almost a year, they had their case and death counters up on the screen 24/7.  As I don't watch much CNN, I'm not sure if they are still doing that, but my guess would be that, now that Donald Trump is no longer president, they don't need to keep people living in fear of orange man killing them all.  Still, I don't know, so don't take my word for it.

CNN may no longer be inducing panic with their tickers, but our president*, despite the fact that he's fully vaccinated, is still wearing one, and sometimes two masks.  Last week, he had a video climate summit and wore a mask... on a video call.  No other world leader felt it necessary to wear a mask on a call where the participants were all in another country.  I'm guessing ours is still trying to play up the pandemic, even though, by any sane person's best guess, he doesn't need to be masked up all the time.

The New York Times also wants to keep the panic porn alive and well with this article on Friday: How COVID upended a Century of Patterns in U.S. Deaths

It starts out with this line:

"The U.S. death rate in 2020 was the highest above normal since the early 1900s — even surpassing the calamity of the 1918 flu pandemic."

Then they share this little graph:

Which clearly makes it look as bad as they wanted it to.  Later on they shared yet another graphic which kind of undercuts what they said, but it wasn't at the top of the page, so likely most of the public won't ever see it, and trust me, no major media source is going to publish past the first graph.

Clearly, we didn't really break the pattern of the 1918 Spanish Flu.  Not even close. But then we got this tidbit:

Combined with deaths in the first few months of this year, Covid-19 has now claimed more than half a million lives in the United States. The total number of Covid-19 deaths so far is on track to surpass the toll of the 1918 pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 nationwide.

There are other charts as well, but you can get a graph to say anything you want depending on how you input the data.  The fact is that little paragraph is widely misleading, in that it attempts to equate our current pandemic with the Spanish flu of 1918.  Except you can't not really.  The US population was one third of what it is now.  So I did some number crunching.

If COVID is on track to kill as many people as the Spanish Flu did, accounting for population differences, the numbers would have to be this:

US Population 2020: 330,222,422

Positive Cases: 92,462,278

Deaths: 2,034,170

But this is the current information:

US Population 2020: 330,222,422

Positive Cases: 31,883,289

Deaths: 565,272

So no, we aren't anywhere near the Spanish Flu, which was far more virulent (10% verses 28%) and more deadly (1.7% verses 2.2%).

So even if CNN is backing off their panic porn (once again, I have no idea), the Times is keeping it alive, along with our President* who is vaccinated and still acting like the end is near.

**This took me all of 20 minutes, to find the data, do the math, and then put it in a blog.  The Times must really think we're idiots.

Small Bites, Edition 3, April 23, 2021

 So, I took an unexpected break.  I have bosses who need to use vacation time.  Vacation time for bosses, means more working hours for me.  I don't mind, I have great bosses, and they richly deserve all their time off.  However, when I'm working all those hours, I don't have time for much else.  I'm trying so hard to make this more regular, I promise.  On that note, here's your third edition of Small Bites.

This week, a jury convicted Officer Derek Chavin of one count of second degree murder, one count of third degree murder, and one count of manslaughter.  The third degree murder charge, per Minnesota standards didn't even apply, but hey, whatever.  Derek Chauvin should go to prison.  I don't believe he was the sole cause of the death of George Floyd, but he was partly responsible.  What do I mean?  He didn't inject Floyd with a lethal overdose of fentanyl.  He didn't block his coronary arteries either.  He did however fail to address the obvious medical issue Floyd was having, and that makes him complicit in the man's death.  For that, he should be going to prison.  However, some of our more vocal citizens may have made that not possible.  Maxine Waters should have stayed home, instead of going to Minnesota and inciting violence.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune should have avoided printing nameless in depth biographies of the jurors in their newspaper on the very day the jury was to start deliberating.  BLM shouldn't have threatened to burn down the city if they didn't get the verdict they wanted.  All of those things could give the defense the opportunity to appeal for a mistrial.  The judge in the case even said as much.  And at least one juror has said "I didn't want the city burning down again.  I was afraid they would come after me."  Yikes.

Apparently Loudon County in Virginia is going to do away with advanced math classes for anyone under 11th grade.  No more honors math for your kids!  Way to deprive math geniuses of their chance in the STEM fields, especially female kids.  All this is supposed to be in the name of equity.  Here's the thing. Not every kid, no matter how smart, is good enough in every subject to take advanced classes.  The ones who are should have the opportunity to do so.  Depriving them of that opportunity in the name of equity is just plain stupid.

I have a message for certain members of our elite, and by elite I mean, politicians, actors, and CEOs.  (I use elite in the loosest way possible, since I don't truly believe those people are better than me.) Stop telling black people they are too dumb, backward, poor or whatever, to do simple things.  It's denigrating, even when you clothe it in kente cloth, kneeling, and anti-racism.  You can't buy alcohol without ID.  You can't board a plane without ID. You can't buy a gun without ID.  You can't go visit the White House...oh wait, nevermind, you can't do that anyway because it's behind a fence.  My point is, you can't get through life without a photo ID.  So claiming that needing one to vote is somehow racist, is pretty much claiming that living life is racist.  And claiming that, particularly, minority people are unable to do something required to participate in life is just... well, it's racist.  So please, stop.

Lebron James targeted a police officer, and then deleted the tweet, when it caused more hate.  Duh.  It's obvious King James was drafted right out of high school, because I would hope a college attendee would realize that posting a picture of a police officer saying "you're next" is inviting the kind of hate one purports to be against.  That is to say, hate not involving hating on white people, cops, and anything the Chinese government hates.  Chinese government hate is good.  It wasn't hate that was being spread by the way.  It was people calling out James because apparently he cared more about the knife wielding criminal then the poor black girl about to be gutted.  Tweet deleted, but not before everyone basically called him the fool that he is.  

Which leads me to a reflective moment.  Why do we care so much what actors, sports stars and mediocre pop singers think?  These are people who pretend to be someone else, play a game, or get auto-tuned for a living.  They aren't better than us just because they have their mug on our TV screen.  They aren't more altruistic or morally superior.  They are there to entertain us, not to educate us.  Pardon me for sounding like a horrible person, but I don't want them educating me.  Most of them just aren't that smart.  Yet we have made them our de facto spokespeople.  Why?  It's sad that they think they have the ability to influence the way we think, or maybe it's sad that we actually let them influence the way we think.  

Yeah, that's it from me.  Until next time....