suddenly, there is breathless talk that washington state is about to be overwhelemd by covid again.

they are requiring masks again because of the "crisis".

this is their hospital census

can someone please circle for me the part that looks like a current crisis?

i don't see it

for some reason WA stopped reporting "in ICU" and switched to "on ventilator currently"

so we only have data back a month.

but i am still struggling to see the scary part.

WA has 13,000 hospital beds and about 1500 ventilators.

% used by covid:

beds: 1.6%
vent: 2.5%

yet CBS runs this:

it's more "how to scare with selective truth" lessons (this is getting formulaic)

it refers to one hospital in one county (yakima)

yakima county has 251k people, 3.3% of washinton state.

virginia mason memorial (the one hospital they cite) has 27 ICU beds

here's the surrounding 20 miles.

11 hospitals. yet they cite one hospital and use it to stand for a whole county and chose a small, rural county that's 3.3% of the state and make it sound like a statewide crisis that it clearly is not.

the state looks great.

yakima looks to be an extreme outlier in WA and VM memorial an outlier within that outlier.

yakima has 3.3% of WA population, but 22% of covid cases, 11% of hospitalizations, and 11% of deaths.

the only other county with ratios like that is benton county next door.

both include and border the yakma indian reservation which (if it mirrors many other native american populations) may be a hotspot.

the full hospitalization count for yakima county is 457.

that's CUMULATIVE, not current census.

full state census is 70% off highs from apr.

the whole state right now has 204 cov+ hospitalizations.

VM memorial alone has 222 beds and has 11 other hospitals near it.

how can they be "overwhelmed by covid?"

how can this even be a blip on the state totals?

i don't even know what to say about governor jay "wet pants" inslee's claim that R is now back to 3.

wow. just wow.

it's so insanely impossible that anyone saying it is permanently disqualified from discussing epidemiology.

i think CHAZ may have slipped him something...

this seems to be the current media pattern:

pick some tiny corner case and use it to spread baseless fear and hysterically demand that everyone be locked inside again.

it's FAR too widespread, too formulaic, and too carefully crafted to be an accident. https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1274823561635434496?s=20

media looks desperate to use fear and deeply dishonest reporting to get clicks

this is why i'm going to stop linking the stories and screenshot them.

i do not want them getting paid for this. if we stop clicking, they'll stop doing it.

so let's stop. https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1275093309224935425?s=20

that is my ask of you. stop clicking on and spreading this disinformation, even if it's to point out what total disinformation it is.

screenshot and forward it so you do not give them the clicks.

if enough people do this, it will stop being so profitable for them to do it.

the holy trinity of clickbait is anger, fear, and self-satisfaction.

it's how they make you click.

and forward only the things that make you say "that's stupid!" is what buries reason under massive waves of stupid and makes stupid the signal. https://twitter.com/boriquagato/status/1150411737566367746?s=20

this is an emergent property of social media.

"don't feed the troll" applies to news outlets just the same as it does to dingbats and harassers in your feed.

if we click on things because they are stupid, media will produce more. that's how it works.

only we can stop that.

encouraging this sort of fear mongering has real consequences and NONE of them are good.