THE PROBLEM WITH FACTS

In this series on Critical Thinking about Facts, we have seen that there are lots of problems with facts. While facts are essential to our well-being and sanity, they are not so easy to access or determine. What’s clear is that merely calling something a “fact,” does not make it so. And there’s a great many ways to distort a “fact” so that it is not factual.

The next time someone quotes a “fact” to you to make a point be sure to ask these questions: What is the context and background of the fact? What are you not saying about the fact?

Recent Biden went on the campaign trail declaring that the new three trillion bill “will cost nothing, zero.” “It’s all paid for already.” He repeated that so-called “fact” over and over. But it seemed fishy to me from the beginning. If it costs nothing and if it’s already paid for, why all the opposition? Why did Joe Manchin worry about the cost and did the Congressional Budget Office estimate it would cost three trillion? How could the government aim to spend 3 to 5 trillion dollars when it has a deficient of 21 trillion and it “cost nothing.”

Every news channel these days lead out on their evening news about Covid. They state “with the new variant omicron, cases of covid are rising.” But what are they not saying? Without more context, a fact like that is not actually a fact, but mere propaganda. So let’s get some more facts. Here’s one from the CDC: “The average person dying of covid in the USA is 79 years of age with four co-morbidities.” Ah, now that’s a very different picture! Especially when you add another fact. “The average age of death for males in the US is 79.”

Oh my God! Those who are dying of covid are mostly the people who would be dying anyway! This is what they are not telling us. So what’s the deal with the Fear Pandemic that the media, and most governments, are perpetuating? Facts need context. So here, from the CDC, are the numbers of deaths per year in the US from 2014 through 2020 to give even more context to the subject.

2014: 2,626,418 2015: 2,712,630 : Increase - 86,212 - 3.28% 2016 : 2,744,248 : Increase - 31,618 - 1.16% 2017 : 2,813,503 : Increase - 69,255 - 2.52% 2018 : 2,839,206 : Increase - 25,703 - 1% 2019: 2,855,000 : Increase - 15,794- 0.55% 2020: 2,913,144 : Increase - 58,144 - 2%

From the beginning, it is a fact that people die. And when you have an aging population and the average age of death is 79, there’s going to be a lot of deaths every day. CNN is notorious for putting up the number of deaths by Covid to create panic. But what if they put up the number that normally die every day? Before the pandemic in 2019, that number in the US gives a base number of 7,821.92 daily. Whoooo! Nearly 8,000! Not new cases, but deaths.