It is always potential dangerous when we look at the world through partisan tinted glasses that obscure reality. That this is the way that many people view the world is not news, nor is this a new phenomenon, but one present throughout human history. The danger of doing this was demonstrated in a letter to the Editor published in the April 1st edition of The Derrick/News-Herald (our local newspaper, which I've read every day since moving here in 2012) by an Oil City man named William Strong. In the letter, Mr. Strong contends falsely that the "chances of not contracting COVID-19 stands at 99.95%" and a few sentences later invents a more stringent statistic, "The chances of a person getting this flu is .01 of 1%, infinitesimally small." Set aside for the moment the fact that the number of confirmed cases divided by the total population does not equal a person's 'chance' of getting a particular illness, because this is not a random event but one dependent upon how much contact each person has with the virus itself, which cannot be the same for each of us. For example, the "chance" of being hit by lightning in a given year may be
x, but
x will increase dramatically if you play golf in a thunderstorm. Consequently, we're not talking about "chance" in a purely mathematical sense {
Chance is the occurrence of events in the absence of any obvious intention or cause...} because the decisions that each person make will radically affect not only their own outcome but potentially that of many others. Setting that nerdy thought aside, the math employed by Mr. Strong only works (".01 of 1%") if the TOTAL number of cases in America had stopped at 30,000. Unfortunately for the math in Strong's argument, as of 4/1/20, the
cases of confirmed COVID-19 in America stood at 163,539, or .049% already {close to his first assertion of 99.95% but...}
and rising rapidly. {UPDATE: 186,101 as of 4/2/20} We are not at the end of this pandemic, not even at its climax. In other words, the statistics used in the argument were outdated by the time they were published, and will only become more so as this pandemic progresses.
It isn't the statistical laxity that drew my attention to William Strong's letter, but the conclusions that his partisan goggles drew from his faulty mathematics. The last 2/3 of the letter (please read for yourself below) are an attack upon those who are the political opponents of the politician/party that he supports. The entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic, from its coverage in the media to the responses of various governors are viewed through a purely political lens resulting in a viewpoint unconnected with reality which declares that a global pandemic (that he believes to be over-hyped due to bad mathematics) is being used by tyrannical forces to destroy the President. If this were true, countries around the world would be in on the plot, as would most of the world's corporations and billionaires who are all acting as if COVID-19 were a real public health threat. I would imagine that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans believe some variation of what Mr. Strong has written to our local newspaper. Whether or not you think that the government has done too much, or too little, too soon or too late, is not the issue. Those are legitimate discussions that, if based in reality, have the potential to help us navigate not only this crisis but future ones as well. The true problem, and in this case real life danger, is that those who believe, as Mr. Strong does, that this pandemic is a purely political issue, not a medical/public health one, will purposefully downplay and ignore any cautionary restrictions, resulting in a broader spread of this virus than otherwise would occur. It is illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater and everyone knows it, but it is morally irresponsible to yell, "Ignore the fire, it is a hoax!" when we can all see the smoke.
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| Letter to the Editor from The Derrick/News-Herald published on 4/1/20 |
