Coronavirus Becomes Leading Cause of Death in U.S.

[Ms. Toad]

17. You're completely missing my point.

The chart compares a point in time measurement to an average measurement.

If they included actual deaths on the days in question - against actual deaths from COVID 19 on the days in question the visualization would not be misleading.

If they included average COVID 19 deaths against average deaths from other causes the visualization would not be misleading

It is only when you compare absolute deaths on a specific day with average deaths from other causes - especially wihtout being clear about what you are doing that it is misleading.

It is misleading to the point that Newsweek believed (without checking against actual data) that it was comparing the average daily COVID deaths to other averages. It published an article referencing the average daily COVID deaths

It is misleading to the point that several peopel on DU believe the same thing.

I'm not being nit-picky - this is actually misleading, and I am responding to the fact that the misinterpretation is being repeated in more than one location (without properly identifying where the information came from). A year from now, or a decade form now, someone will find the Newsweek article and report that the average number of deaths from COVID 19 on 4/8 was 1970. This kind of sloppy and misleding representation, repeated by other generally reputable sources makes sourcing the truth very hard. There's all sorts of crazy information out there about infection rate of influenza, or the number of deaths from the 1918 influenza, etc. that appears to have its origins in just this kind of misleading representation that was latched onto by someone who reported it as if it was the truth, then by someone else, and so on.