Always ask how people know what they think they know about COVID-19

When someone says COVID-19 is just like the flu or doesn’t kill as many Americans as traffic accidents or is worse than a shut-down economy, ask a simple question.

How do you know?

It is a fundamental question for anyone seeking the truth.

“When you hear someone compare the number of deaths that will result from the coronavirus pandemic to the number of car accidents in the United States, your first response should be something along the lines of, how do you know how many people will die from the pandemic?” reporter Philip Bump brilliantly explained in a Washington Post article.

The CDC reported the first U.S. COVID-19 case on Jan. 21. Washington State reported the first death on Feb. 29.

As of Wednesday, there were 802,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 40,000 U.S. deaths, according to The Atlantic Magazine’s The COVID Tracking Project, which uses Johns Hopkins University and federal, state and local resources because, outrageously, there is no federal database.

There were 36,500 traffic fatalities nationwide and 782 in Kentucky in 2018, the last year with complete numbers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

So, you can’t possibly compare the static number of traffic or flu deaths over 12 months to the moving target of COVID-19 deaths over only two months, all while COVID-19 cases have been doubling every eight days.

Even the known numbers are dubious. For the most part, they don’t include non-hospital deaths, untested symptomatic people or infected people with no symptoms (asymptomatic). In Iceland, the world leader in percentage of per-capita testing, scientists found 50 percent of those with coronavirus were asymptomatic.

It is criminal that there is no centralized, federal testing protocols or coordination of purchasing and distributing standardized, FDA-approved rapid tests. Instead, governors complain they have to bid internationally against federal agencies and each other for test kits and supplies, often settling in desperation for unapproved tests.

So, when the White House says our tests are “perfect,” ask which one. And when President Trump says some states can re-open because they don’t have many cases, ask how he knows.

Trump’s usual answer is the U.S. has done more tests than any other country — “a lie of the technical truth” because his numbers are accurate but completely out of context.

We have tested around 4.2 million people (as of Wednesday evening as are all the numbers in the article). That only comes to around 1.2 percent per capita, according to Our World In Data. We rank behind 21 other countries and miles behind Iceland’s 12.8 percent. Kentucky has tested 36,075, around 0.8 percent, and ranks near the bottom of all states.

Gov. Andy Beshear said Wednesday that testing has been a “challenge” as he announced plans to increase weekly testing by 20,000 and, for the first time, for “everyone” at four Kroger locations.

So far in April, the United States has averaged around 147,000 tests a day, according to The COVID Tracking Project.

To safely re-open the country by mid-May, we need 500,000 to 700,000 daily tests, according to Harvard University estimates as reported by The New York Times.

Calling this an overreaction because we’ve never done so much testing for the flu — which also kills thousands of people — is comparing apples to oranges

That’s because the CDC range of 22,000-60,000 deaths for the 2019-2020 flu season is “a composite number,” according to Jonathan V. Last, executive editor of the conservative online magazine The Bulwark.

“It includes a relatively small number of deaths directly ascribed to influenza (meaning, there was a positive flu-test involved) PLUS a much larger number of deaths from pneumonia, where it is assumed that because flu-like symptoms were present, the influenza virus was likely at play,” Last wrote.

That is largely opposite of what we do with COVID-19, Last added. (Some states now count presumed COVID-19 deaths.)

Nonetheless, COVID-19 is more contagious and may have 10 times the mortality rate of the common flu, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Spanish Flu killed millions, but put that in context: in 1918 there were no flu vaccines, antiviral drugs or antibiotics for secondary infections like pneumonia.)

So, who will you believe, a physician and immunologist with decades of experience like Fauci, or the talking-heads who only play doctors on TV? In other words, are the sources cited acknowledged experts in their field?

Remember VIA: Are their “facts” Verifiable and in context, are the sources Independent of political and commercial associations, and are they Accountable like news organizations that respond to criticism and correct their mistakes.

I would hope anyone you ask these simple questions would react calmly with thoughtful, well-researched answers.

Unfortunately, given the times we live in, I’m still a cynic, which the great journalist H.L. Mencken once defined as “a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”

John Winn Miller is a retired journalist living in Lexington who writes screenplays, produces indie movies and is a partner in the social media startup Friends2Follow.