I’ve been poking a not so veiled hint at the WMUR news readers that they need to provide a better context when they read off their unitary numbers of the snapshot of the WuFlu in NH. I know that it has either terrified a lot of people (re: “It’s the reincarnation of the Black Plague; we’re ALL gonna die!!!”) or has caused folks to go WuFlu-blind (as in the “nose blind” in the Fabreeze commercials). Well, they finally did a bit of an upgrade:
I “boxed / arrow’d” it for you – they FINALLY decided to give a bit of context. Only 2.3% of NH’s residents have gotten the WuFlu. For context, the worst pandemic in Europe, the Black Plague or Black Death, is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe’s population during the Middle Ages. WuFlu sickened 3 folks out of 100. The Black Plague KILLED up to 40 people out of 100. Which one do you think was a REAL pandemic? Merriam-Webster doesn’t think so:
“occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.”
So, is 2.3% an “exceptionally high proportion” of the NH population? Finally, WMUR says the quiet part out loud (and we’ve been saying for a long, long time) – it’s really not a pandemic unless someone is trying (yet again) to change the definition of the word to fit a political what if WMUR had included that little data point 3 times a day since February – how differently would the panic stricken in NH be thinking about this “pandemic”?
So, was it us at GraniteGrok? Or with the advent of the vaccine being used tomorrow, has WMUR figured that the end of their Panic-Porn Era is over?
What say you?
