Trying something new … an ET note published in the clear on Twitter.

“All Due Respect”

(plz RT if it’s something you’d like me to keep doing)

“All due respect” is, of course, what you say to someone for whom you have no respect at all. https://twitter.com/wesbury/status/1337631829252317187?s=20

“All due respect” is one of the most frequently used Sopranos lines, and the title of one of the best episodes, where Tony kills his cousin because it’s best for business.

The word “respect” is the entire point of organized crime: you’re more effective when you put your evil deeds behind a veneer of respectability and corporate appearance.

I think more lives have been endangered and more damage has been done by “respectable” Covid truthers and minimizers, armed with sophomoric analysis and intentionally misleading charts, than by all the Q-Anon wackos combined.

I’m not talking about honest disagreements on appropriate public health policy responses to Covid-19. I’m not talking about honest mistakes in assessing the biology of this novel coronavirus and how it spreads.

I’m talking about a willful effort to present Covid health data in a way that encourages it’s-just-the-flu risk-taking, all behind the respectable veneer of a corporation or a think tank or a government agency.

There are many “respectable” Covid minimizers, but today I’m going to focus on one – @wesbury and the Covid-19 Tracker published by First Trust, an Illinois-based asset manager with AUM of ~$150 billion.

[NB: I have no financial interest of any sort in writing this. I have no relationship with any competitor to First Trust. I do not own stocks in individual companies, nor do I have any short positions in any form on anything.]

Twenty-two of these Covid-19 Trackers have been published by First Trust going back to June 29th. Here’s the most recent, published on Dec. 10th.

Each of the exhibits is a first-degree chart crime.

Today I’m focusing on the worst – the graphic in the upper left corner.

The vertical axis on the left, in blue, is daily Covid cases. The vertical axis on the right, in orange, is daily Covid deaths.

Now let me show you how this chart has “evolved” over time.

Here’s the first published chart, from June 30th:

And here’s the chart from a few weeks later, July 23rd:

The blue axis (cases) has almost doubled, as the actual number of cases exploded above the prior chart limit. The orange axis (deaths) has expanded, too, *even though the reported number of deaths barely rose at all*.

Here’s Nov. 5th. Again, the scale of the blue axis (cases) is widened – now a max of 120,000. Again, the scale of the orange axis (deaths) is widened – now a max of 5,000 – *even as the reported number of deaths did not grow at all*.

Now look at the chart from Nov. 12th:

And the chart from Nov. 19th:

And Dec. 10th.

This “respectable” economist has scaled daily Covid deaths at 0 – 12,000.

There are only ~7,000 daily deaths in the United States from ALL causes.

It’s like charting Apple revenues on a scale of ALL company revenues.

This “respectable” economist has magnified the scale of Covid deaths by more than 3 times the original scale, even though today’s number would still fit comfortably on the original scale.

Why is this “respectable” economist doing this?

Because he wants you to believe that Covid deaths are largely unchanged even as Covid cases are skyrocketing (“we test too much!”).

There is no legitimate statistical reason for this persistent magnification of the reported-death axis. There is only a desire to make it look like cases are growing but deaths are not. There is only narrative.

Why does this “respectable” economist at First Trust want to promote this false and dangerous narrative? What is his motivation?

I don’t care.

All due respect, @wesbury, all I care about is that this stops.

Now.