Item
Skeptic's flawed analysis of pandemics over a century using data that ignores population growth and globalization.
Title (Dublin Core)
Skeptic's flawed analysis of pandemics over a century using data that ignores population growth and globalization.
Description (Dublin Core)
The attached image was used as evidence in an article for pandemic skeptics to make a "realistic risk assessment" of their danger during the COVID-19 pandemic in an article originally published in March 2021. The image utilizes only the mortality rate of England and Wales over the last century to visually "show" that COVID-19 is just a "blip" on the map. They are seemingly hinting through an image that this pandemic is fake news compared to world wars or influenza, using data to propagandize skepticism. What is misleading about this data is that they are using numbers of today against nearly one hundred years ago and are not contextualizing the numbers at all. At first glance one can see the overall mortality rate is going down. Of course, this is due to improved science, sanitization, water, and medicine over this time period. We must not also forget that this rate has gone down because the number of people in England and Wales, as in all life on our Earth, has increased. Like all math problems, the larger the denominator the small the rate. For example, if 100 people died out of a population of 1,000, the mortality rate is 10% (100/1000x100). But, if 100 people died in a population of 10,000, the mortality rate is only 1 percent (100/10000x100). Trying to compare numbers in a situation where the world population is much different and globalized, is not an equal comparison. I believe this is misleading persuasive propaganda that skeptics used to make COVID look like not a big deal. However, the risk factors have much more to do with your age, location, health history, interaction with other people, and how your surrounding areas respond to a pandemic, none of which is contextualized in this vague graph.
Date (Dublin Core)
March 1, 2021
Creator (Dublin Core)
SKY
Contributor (Dublin Core)
Jason Inskeep
Event Identifier (Dublin Core)
HST580
Partner (Dublin Core)
Arizona State University
Type (Dublin Core)
Image
Link (Bibliographic Ontology)
Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)
English
Pandemic Skeptics
English
Conflict
English
Emotion
Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)
pandemic skeptic
mortality
conflict
opinion
belief
Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)
pandemic skeptic
mortality
Linked Data (Dublin Core)
Date Submitted (Dublin Core)
05/15/2022
Date Modified (Dublin Core)
05/15/2022
05/25/2022
10/20/2023
Item sets
This item was submitted on May 15, 2022 by Jason Inskeep using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive
Click here to view the collected data.