Category: Current Events

Journalists, Broadcasters, and Pundits Have Been Cherry-Picking Covid Stats

As we near the election, I find myself exerting a great deal of energy to keep my fellow liberals away from the extremes. I have little tolerance for partisanship. At least these days.

One of the big issues for me is the way Covid statistics have been weaponized, if you will. Anyone who thinks about it should realize that a big or populous country will give you different stats. Now if you go to Google and type in “covid statistics”, you can sort the information that they’ve compiled (from sources like the NY Times and the Wikipedia) in all sorts of ways, but in four major ways. Number of cases worldwide, number of deaths worldwide, average number of cases per million, and average number of deaths per million. As you might guess, the numbers are different when you eliminate the size of a country as a variable. Here are the first five countries in each of those lists.

Mountaineers And Charlie Hebdo

This week saw another terrorist attack against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo — or rather against two people the attacker thought worked for Charlie Hebdo. Because of death threats tied to their publishing a cartoon of Mohammad, they moved their offices to a secret location. Obviously they didn’t mention this to any Islamic militants, because a kid from Pakistan showed up where they used to be with a butcher’s knife.

I know that when the first attack happened, in 2015, we all were Charlie Hebdo. Except are we still? How many times will that be necessary?

They’re like mountain climbers. With no real excuse other than, “Because it’s there,” these people who might have families are out there risking their lives for the thrill of it. And if they end up stranded? Even if they survive, they’ve wasted a shit-ton of time and resources getting rescued.

The least Charlie Hebdo can do is back off. Now they’re getting strangers killed.