DAREN JONESCU

Enjoying the view from Limbo

Telling Figures, Indeed

by ·

A shocking headline from CBS News informs us, or at least those few of us brave enough to face the hardest truths, that the “U.S. has more COVID cases than some countries have people.” Is this real, or some kind of sick joke? How is one supposed to sleep at night after being confronted with, let alone fully digesting, the sheer enormity of that fact? The U.S. has more COVID cases than some countries have people. In total!

I am reminded of a similarly alarming revelation, from an old episode of the BBC information program, Spectrum. I highlight the revelation in question in bold type. (Okay, Spectrum was actually a Monty Python sketch.)

Host (Michael Palin): Good evening. Tonight ‘Spectrum’ looks at one of the major problems in the world today – the whole vexed question of what is going on. Is there still time to confront it, let alone solve it, or is it too late? What are the figures, what are the facts, what do people mean when they talk about things? Alexander Hardacre of the Economic Affairs Bureau.

(Cut to equally intense pundit in front of a graph with three different coloured columns with percentages at the top. He talks with great authority.)

Hardacre (Graham Chapman): In this graph, this column represents 23% of the population. This column represents 28% of the population, and this column represents 43% of the population.

(Cut back to presenter.)

Host: Telling figures indeed, but what do they mean to you, what do they mean to me, what do they mean to the average man in the street?

To continue now with today’s analogous dire news, from the CBS exposé by the courageous, Pulitzer Prize worthy reporter Caitlin O’Kane (presumably her real name):

The United States has more coronavirus cases than many countries have people. With over 5 million confirmed cases, more people have been infected in the U.S. than the total population of places like Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, Croatia, Jamaica and numerous other countries.

You might want to just stay at home tonight, sit in a darkened room with a stiff drink (I personally recommend chamomile tea) and ponder those apocalyptic facts while asking the question we must all be asking now: What exactly does the phrase “places like Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, Croatia, Jamaica and numerous other countries” even mean? What, for example, would constitute a “place like numerous other countries”?

From a proposed list of exclusive reports that CBS News chose not to run with:

  • The United States is comprised of more states than “places like Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, Croatia, Jamaica and numerous other countries” have cities.
  • The United States has more millions of humans than “places like Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, Croatia, Jamaica and numerous other countries” have hundreds of thousands.
  • The twentieth most populated state in the U.S. (Wisconsin) has a larger total population than “places like Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, Croatia, Jamaica and numerous other countries.”
  • The United States has more people unemployed today due to government lockdowns alone than the total population of “places like Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, Croatia, Jamaica and numerous other countries.”
  • The United States has more citizens who have been deliberately kept addled, uninformed, manipulable, and irrational by progressive public schooling and a neo-Marxist news media than “places like Ireland, New Zealand, Panama, Croatia, Jamaica and numerous other countries” have total citizens.

Who will run with those shocking stories, I wonder?

Tags:

You may also like...