Friday's Absurdity of the Day
The media's false COVID reporting all moves in a single direction. Why is that?
Friday's Absurdity of the Day: So, you may be wondering how we end up with so much confusion among the public and their elected officials about the real data behind the COVID pandemic.
Here's a great example of how that happens, courtesy of shoddy reporting and editing by the folks at the #TexasTribune. Earlier this week, the Tribune falsely reported that "over 5800 children had been hospitalized during a 7-day period in August."
That story - under the alarmist headline of "Texas children and children’s hospitals are under siege from two viruses: RSV and COVID-19" - went live and stayed up for hours with that false information. Anyone who understands how the Internet works knows that the highest rate of clicks that that story will receive occurred during its first few hours of life.
Later, the Tribune discovered what was presumably a "mistake," and issued this amazing correction:
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Correction, Aug. 12, 2021: An earlier version of this story overstated the number of children who have been hospitalized in Texas recently with COVID-19. The story said over 5,800 children had been hospitalized during a seven-day period in August, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number correctly referred to children hospitalized with COVID-19 since the pandemic began. In actuality, 783 children were admitted to Texas hospitals with COVID-19 between July 1 and Aug. 9 of this year.
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So, to be absolutely clear, instead of 5,800 children admitted during a 7 day period, the real number was 783 children in 40 days. On average, the Tribune just "corrected" its reporting from 830 per day to 19 per day in a state with a population of 25 million.
Stunning. That is one doozy of a "correction."
The Tribune's false reporting took place just a few days after Florida media falsely falsely parroted a false CDC report that combined numbers for that state's cases counted on Saturday and Sunday as a single day's number of cases. That false reporting, creating fear and alarm in the public, was allowed to stand for a full day before it was corrected.
As always, the "errors" in the media all go in a single direction: The direction that causes the maximum fear and confusion.
If you think this is all an accident, you might just be a little bit naive.