{"id":2842,"date":"2021-10-04T18:03:11","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T01:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glennastory.net\/?p=2842"},"modified":"2021-10-04T18:36:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T01:36:10","slug":"lies-damned-lies-and-the-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/?p=2842","title":{"rendered":"Lies, Damned Lies, and the Press"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.  <\/em>&#8212; often attributed to Mark Twain who attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, who never said it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The U.S. has now exceeded 700,000 total Covid-19 deaths. The press is reporting this as the worst pandemic in U.S. history. That depends on how you define &#8220;worst&#8221;.  If you take \u201cthe most people killed\u201d as \u201cworst\u201d, then the claim is true. However, the Spanish Flu killed 0.7% of the U.S. population whereas the Covid pandemic has (so far) killed only 0.2% of the U.S. population. So in terms of percentage of the population killed, Spanish Flu is still holds the grim distinction of being \u201cworst\u201d.  (Or, rather, &#8220;worse&#8221;;  According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.healthline.com\/health\/worst-disease-outbreaks-history\">https:\/\/www.healthline.com\/health\/worst-disease-outbreaks-history<\/a>, A cholera outbreak in three waves in 1832-1866 killed 5-10% of the U.S. population.)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not giving you these statistics to depress you (although they are depressing).  I just wish the press were less sensationalist in their reporting.  Are they making statements like this to be deliberately provocative?  Maybe, but I&#8217;m more inclined to think they suffer from the thing a lot of Americans suffer from:  The inability to think critically.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(See also &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/glennastory.net\/?p=731\">Lies, Damned Lies, and the Market Share<\/a>.)&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. &#8212; often attributed to Mark Twain who attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, who never said it. The U.S. has now exceeded 700,000 total Covid-19 deaths. The press is reporting this as the worst pandemic in U.S. history. That depends on how you define &#8220;worst&#8221;. If you take \u201cthe&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/?p=2842\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lies, Damned Lies, and the Press<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-19","category-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2842"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2851,"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2842\/revisions\/2851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennastory.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}