NOT in Crisis

I live in South Florida which, according to Team Apocalypse's trained hamsters in the media, was (until just this week) the "epicenter" of COVID-19. Oddly, people are NOT falling dead in the streets, hospitals are NOT overcrowded with people on ventilators, and life proceeds with more than a few theatrical virus precautions, but it proceeds.

Issues and Insights reports:

“Florida Sets Yet Another Coronavirus Record: 173 Deaths In A Day.”

“A record 173 Floridians died from the virus Thursday, an average of more than one every eight minutes.” 

“The 134 new confirmed deaths is the second-largest increase on record, coming five days after the largest one-day jump of 156 last week.”

“COVID-19 has ravaged Florida, with more than 237,000 people testing positive and 2,013 dying from the virus in July alone.”

So what characteristic do all of the reports share? They are all false. [emphasis mine]

It is not true that 173 people died from COVID-19 “in a day” in Florida. Nor did 134, or 156 on previous days.

It is also untrue than 2,013 had died in July when that story was published. 

All of these scary headlines are based on the number of deaths reported by the state on any given day. This is not the same as the number of deaths that occurred on those days.

The difference might seem trivial. But it’s crucial because the press is using the timing of Florida’s death reports to whip up a frenzy about COVID-19 running riot in the state.

Team Apocalypse and their trained hamsters correctly assume that the general public will not understand these differences and that dishonest headlines like those noted will increase already high levels of  fear, uncertainty and doubt.

And that's the whole point. The goal of all of this is to keep people scared with the hope that they'll blame Donald Trump and/or FL Gov. Ron DeSantis (who has done, despite media lies, a remarkably competent job in handling this crisis in FL) and vote them out of office. There are plenty of catastrophists who will blame Trump but it appears that the majority of them are Democrats who would not have voted for Trump and/or DeSantis in any event. I know of people—all of whom are (coincidentlally) Democrats, who are so traumatized by COVID-19 that have not ventured out of their homes since Mid-March. All you can do is shake your head.

If the past five months have taught us anything, it's that there is a considerable lack of critical thinking among large segments of the general public, driven by an inability to understand real data that defines the limits of the threat posed by COVID-19, and augmented by blatantly dishonest "reporting" that has been intended to sow hysteria for political purposes.*

So to our friends up North: Rest assured, Florida is NOT in crisis. The hamsters desperately need Florida to fail so that their 'shut-it-down' narrative remains intact. Florida just won't accommodate them. Too friggin' bad.

FOOTNOTE:

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*   During the COVID-19 shutdown, the petty tyrants of Team Apocalypse has established a variety of near-insane dictates to satisfy the hysteria that they themselves have sown throughout the general public. The Democrat politicians who are the backbone of Team Apocalypse have told us that:

• beaches, parks and places of worship MUST be shut down, but massive protests are perfectly fine;
• businesses MUST be crippled with impossible regulations or shut down entirely, but we must spend indiscriminately to support public sector unions who have refused to work in the COVID-era;
• masks MUST be worn not only in enclosed spaces (like an elevator) but outside in the open air. 
• we must close down our re-openings when more "cases" are reported, even if half or more of the people identified by those "cases" show absolutely no symptoms at all and the vast majority of the remainder have symptoms no worse than a bad cold;
• We MUST close down schools indefinitely, even though there has NEVER been a documented case of a child giving COVID-19 to a teacher, and children themselves are threatened far more severely from the common flu than they are from COVID-19
• and on and on.

A collection of supporting catastrophists (a.k.a. "covidiots") cheer on the Dem politicians at the federal, state, and local levels. The media hamsters support all of this with dishonest reporting and sensationalized claims.

And then, leading Democrats have the unmitigated gall to tell us they are "data driven" and "follow the lead of science." The problem is that the majority choose to ignore actual data and real science that doesn't fit their catastrophist narrative.