Below is a meme that I've seen circulating on social media.
“Flu killed 34k people in the U.S. last year. None of you were afraid because the media didn’t tell you to be!”
Your first thought should be, 35,000 people died of a curable disease in the U.S. last year? But, instead, your initial thought was “oh, well, people died of a disease last year so we should let people die of something completely different this year.”
“None of you were afraid.”
I would argue that the people who were dying, and their loved ones were afraid. I would also argue that millions of low-income individuals who have no savings and/or no insurance, or an absurdly high deductible, did not need to be told by the media to fear illness.
“because the media didn’t tell you to be!”
I will never advocate for complete trust in any media source, they are run by individuals or conglomerates with varying biases and I believe any rational adult should recognize that even the sources that have earned their trust are fallible.
If one shares this meme, he or she is effectively telling their friends/followers what point of view to hold, from a purely ignorant point of view.
The CDC estimated about 34,200 deaths in 2018-2019 from Influenza. Many memes of this type tell one half-truth to appear credible. The number is close to true but the application of the statistic is dishonest.
As flawed as many individual members of the media can be, how is one who shares this type of misinformation any better than "the media?"
And, to my final point, there are no vaccines or mass testing available. As of today, the CDC estimated 33,049 deaths in the U.S. in only a matter of 2-3 months. This really shows how intellectually dishonest the comparison to the influenza death toll it really is. The mortality rate would be much higher if we had not taken the steps necessary to social distance or quarantine.
Fear it or not, it is deadly.
If you don’t trust “the media,” you should trust the CDC, WHO, doctors, and nurses.
They’re not the ones spreading misinformation.
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