This past weekend I received a fear laced text about COVID-19 and climate change from a political party. My response was:
“OMG!!!! I’m going to die!!!”
After a short exchange I ended my text saying:
“Get freaking real! Stop fear-mongering me and stop trying to manipulate me. Treat women as if we have a brain.”
Politics and COVID-19 are a powerful combination to fear-monger and emotionally manipulate women. We’re susceptible because:
- We mistakenly identify with our emotions, not our thinking abilities.
- We aren’t as technically savvy so we rely on “the experts”
- We rely on other people (news media and politicians) who also aren’t technically savvy to interpret and analyze for us what the experts are saying.
These media personalities and politicians also conditioned us to believe that anyone who utters those three magical words – “Science, Data, Facts” – knows what they are talking about.
However, that’s not true. Those of us who are trained to work with numbers know “Science, Data and Facts” are completely meaningless until they are analyzed.
Too often people don’t analyze the data. They hear big numbers such as 214,917 COVID-19 deaths and believe they are at high risk of dying if they get COVID-19. Fear-mongering such as the text I received reinforce fears that may be completely unfounded.
So, in order to understand the risk of dying from COVID-19, I looked for the COVID-19 facts that were analyzed.
It took a little research but I found a case study on the CDC website: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics
Using the study data I created this chart:
Simple math reveals your statistical chance of dying if you get COVID-19 based on your age group.
More simple math reveals that over 79% of deaths occur in people over 65. The largest number of death – 30% – come from people over the age of 85.
Now since this is a study and the findings are subject to what data was collected for the study, it probably has some flaws. So I did more digging and found this CDC website: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
I first noticed that their chart says: “Deaths Involving COVID-19.”
The chart DOES NOT say “Deaths From COVID-19”
This suggests that COVID-19 was in many cases the final overloading cause of death (the final straw), not the stand-alone cause. (Important distinction) We also notice that there is a jump in deaths beginning with people in their mid-fifties. For most of us this is when our health issues become apparent and begin to require care or intervention.
Like the study, the chart also shows that about 79% of deaths occur in people over 65 with 30% of the deaths coming from people over the age of 85.
So from the Science, Data, Facts and Analysis should we be fearful of getting COVID-19?
Well that depends on your age group and maybe more importantly your health.
The analysis helps us know where we should place our concern. It also helps us stop creating unfounded fear. But more importantly, it prevents us from being fear-mongered by those who an agenda and want to use fear to manipulate us.
Empowered Women Are Not Fear-Mongered
Empowered Women Analyze The Facts
