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(THREAD) Worldometers reports 172,055 deaths. The NYT reports 56,700 additional "overcount" deaths it frames as COVID-19-related—but its count ended 8/1, and had only partial data from 21 states. The estimated August overcount is 5,710. Is this—below—the real COVID-19 death toll?
1/ I understand the initial reaction anyone has—indeed, that I have myself—when someone tells me a number I've been relying on daily is wrong. But this is a different situation, as the organizations providing us the "official" COVID-19 death toll have already admitted it's wrong.
2/ That's right: the CDC has said, from Day 1, that the official death toll is a dramatic undercount. It's never submitted otherwise. Just so, Worldometers data has been, from Day 1, approximately 48 to 72 hours ahead of the Johns Hopkins data everyone uses, but just as accurate.
3/ The NEW YORK TIMES conducted its analysis of "excess" deaths—the technical term for unexplained deaths deviating from historical norms—in part because of the concession, by the CDC, that the "official" COVID-19 death toll is wrong. Journalists have been trying to set it right.
4/ The problem is that (a) no one has yet put together the disparate data required to offer an accurate COVID-19 death toll, (b) some of the necessary data is unavailable at the state level, and (c) thus far media organizations have insisted on publishing the erroneous CDC data.
5/ The result: Americans are daily given a COVID-19 death toll *every* epidemiologist agrees is wrong. And not wrong by a little bit, but wrong by a *lot*. That wrong data then gets transmitted to the nation—at a time the nation needs to understand the severity of its situation.
6/ I write this thread today because, by at least some measures, this is the five-month mark of the pandemic in the United States. And if you ask most Americans who watch the news how many of us have died of COVID-19 in 150 days, they'll say what they see on TV: "about 169,000."
7/ If you ask epidemiologists what the most urgent issue in America is today, they'll say it's *educating America* about how much *danger* we're in.
And they're engaged in that historically important public awareness campaign with one hand tied behind their back—due to bad data.
And they're engaged in that historically important public awareness campaign with one hand tied behind their back—due to bad data.
8/ We talk about wanting to help first responders, and we acknowledge the best way to do so is to aid them in educating America about the danger we're in. But then we spread data we've been *told* is faulty—data that we know understates the case about the dangers of the pandemic.
9/ What if we stopped? What if media posted, published, and aired daily *two* numbers: "confirmed deaths" and "approximate death toll"? Does anyone doubt that our discussions of the pandemic and its severity and its dangers would be improved by this? Is there really any question?
10/ If 250,000 have died of COVID-19 in the US in 5 months—as the data tells us—we're staring down the possibility of 1 million deaths in 1 year and 8 months, in the context of a pandemic that could last 2 or 3 years if the wait for a vaccine (and/or its deployment) is prolonged.
CONCLUSION/ We can't debate masking and social distancing practices, business and school re-openings, or anything *else* COVID-19-related using *bad data*. Media *must* add a second figure to its on-screen/in-print graphics to help the nation talk through this emergency honestly.
