Fact-checking Fear-based COVID-19 Drudge Report Headlines (4/22)

No doubt we’ve all seen videos on Youtube or Facebook of nurses and doctors pleading with people to take things seriously and follow social distancing guidelines. We’ve probably all read articles outlining the frightening case count and death count projections that research groups around the U.S. have released, and then revised as the results started coming in. We’ve listened to or watched press briefings with local leaders who emphasize the danger of COVID-19 and the imperative to stay at home so that the hospital system doesn’t become overwhelmed.

Those things are happening. COVID-19 is affecting people all over the world in a very serious way, killing thousands.

In light of the seriousness of the situation, it’s interesting that the Drudge Report, one of the most influential news websites in the world, has taken such an un-serious stance on the headlines it releases for the 36 million viewers it gets each day. Let’s take a look at 3 of these headlines today, 1 of them being the main headline for the site, and talk about the issues with each of them.

The Facts

1. Cases always rise until they stop coming in completely.
2. The linked article is referencing Monday’s daily count of new cases, which is actually testing that was completed on Sunday or earlier.
3. The daily case number declined 20% from Monday – Tuesday. So it is in fact not rising in the way that the headline is reading.
4. Taking a single day’s results in isolation and stamping it with a fear-based headline is just irresponsible. We really need 3-4 days of numbers to determine if the cases in CA are “rising” as the headline implies.
5. Many states show the same pattern of high numbers on Monday with a 20% decline in numbers on Tuesday. Keep in mind that the CDC changed its case and death reporting guidelines last week, which has led to spikes in death counts and case counts since then.

The Facts

1. Deaths are a lagging indicator of what’s happening on the ground. It takes an average of 18 days from onset of symptoms to death for COVID-19 patients. If we walk back 18 days from yesterday, when this number was reported, we see that on that day, April 3,the highest daily total of new COVID-19 cases were recorded by NJ. So there’s nothing surprising about the high daily death number. It’s exactly what we’d expect.

The Facts

1. Similar to the NJ deaths headline, we have to remember that deaths are a lagging indicator. They don’t tell us anything about what’s actively happening now in terms of infection.
2. “A little over a week” turns out to be “between 9-10 days” when you look back at the daily death counts.
3. On 4/16, 4000 presumed deaths were added by the NYC reporting agencies. That 4000 didn’t occur all during the “a little over a week” time period. The count includes all presumed deaths since NY starting counting.
4. As of today, when this headline is emblazoned in red at the top of the Drudge Report, the doubling time for US deaths is 13 days, showing that as of today, the rate has slowed by 5-6 days when compared to Drudge’s headline claim.

Obviously, fear and conflict sells. It grabs our attention. But it’s also leads to the promotion of highly inaccurate or outdated statistics, as seen just in these few headlines from the Drudge Report this morning. Obviously this isn’t just a Drudge problem. Foxnews, CNN, MSNBC, and the major network channels do the same. Fear is being is being force-fed by these organizations into the minds of anyone willing to be a participant. But we don’t have to be participants. We can look at the data and see for ourselves.

COVID-19 is real. It is happening. But we don’t have to be afraid of it.