Coronavirus Becomes Leading Cause of Death in U.S.

[Ms. Toad]

14. On a handful of days it caused more deaths than the other illnesses.

That doesn't make it a leading cause of death.

Does a single bad plane crash transform flying from one of the safest forms fo transformation into a leading cause of death becuase it kills more people than strokes, for example? No I know would seriously make that argument.

And even if you want to define it atypically, you need to be crystal clear that you are comparing apples to oranges. People are struggling to wrap their minds around the pandemic math. It isirresponsible to portray data in a way anyone who thinks about it for 2 seconds could predict would be misinterpreted by most who see it.

Even Newsweek looked at the chart and repeated what it believed the chart was showing (average daily deaths from COVID 19) without bothering to check the math. When the chart first appeared, I started to respond to an inquiry about it - I knew there was something off about the numbers - but a quick glance at the chart and its labels didn't tell me what was wrong about it. I actually had to go back to the data and calculate it myself before it became clear to me what was "off" in the chart - and the pandemic numbers have always been intuitive to me.

I have seen at least three threads, now, in which people accepted - without question - that what was being displayed was an average daily death rate from COVID 19.