Fearmongering or scaremongering is a form of manipulation which causes fear by using exaggerated rumors of impending danger.
On a recent visit to social media, I noticed the following graphic posted from covidactnow.org:
I was wondering how this could be since Florida had been decreasing in cases, even from the same website as show in the following graphic:
Please note the admonishment at the bottom. Florida’s cases are decreasing as shown in the graphs above the “Vulnerability is very high” statement, yet someone in charge of this data still asserts Floridians are very highly vulnerable. Maybe they have not gotten around to changing it, or maybe they have computer models to figure out how “Communities with higher vulnerability have pre-existing economic, social, and physical conditions that may make it hard to respond to and recover from a COVID outbreak.” Don’t we feel safe.
Circling back around, the initial intent of the graphic posted to social media appears to be fearmongering. Making it seem as though the one of the Florida counties has no ICU beds, the poster envisioned (I suppose) striking a blow to the unjabbed masses, providing yet another reason to acquiesce to the Biden administration’s demand for 100% coverage. However, does the poster even know anything about Lafayette County, Florida? The second smallest county out of 67 in Florida. Does it even have a hospital with an ICU so the ‘data not available’ is actually ‘no such feature.’
I had to look at the data for Lafayette County, Florida to see what I was missing.
Then something else popped out, there was 37.3 cases per 100,000 in Lafayette County, Florida last week. Figuring the 8,400 folks that live in Lafayette county must be going though hell with people dropping dead in the streets may be a legitimate concern. Except for the little note that reads Lafayette county averaged 3 new cases a day over the previous week, I would think we should send in medical teams. After all, if the daily new cases are expressed as a percentage it would be ([3/8400]*100) = 0.0357%. (This doesn’t add up to the provided 37.3 except if you change the 8400 to 8040.)
When these statistics are reported to the public, some of the data might seem extreme when examined. For instance, Miami-Dade county has a population of 2,700,000 showing 11 new cases per 100K day, but the actual new cases are 298 per day. This percentage looks like 11/100K = 0.00011% for the daily rate of new cases in Miami-Dade county. I think they should add another column to the table shown above to indicate the mortality rate over the past week. Then it might give a better idea as to the real threat posed to the public – for instance there were zero COVID deaths in the past week in Lafayette county and 15.4 deaths per seven day average for Miami-Dade or about 5.2% mortality.
Don’t be fooled by the shiny stuff or quoted figures until you dig a little deeper.