The coronavirus has been ranging on for months. News articles about the pandemic pop up daily. And the information we get is all over the place, to put it mildly. This leaves the general public with a sense of confusion.
I created this page to try and organise all of the information out there. After all simply having a lot of information does not actually inform us about what is going on exactly. It is like having an excel sheet full of numbers. Most of us can stare at it for a while before we begin to get anything useful out of it. However, if you place the data into a graph, for example, you can more easily understand what the data is trying to convey. As I mentioned in this post, the most common data presented on many sites about the corona cases is the the number of confirmed cases and the total number of deaths. People seeing these numbers often come away with the wrong impression of the status of the situation.
An example
As an example, let us look at the data presented here (with the German data selected May 8, 2020). The basic data for the number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths is 169,430 and 7,392 respectively.
All people will come away with from the information is that the number of cases is high, and that the number of deaths is optimistically low. However this is not a complete picture. And this is the reason I prefer this site. There is additional information on the site, such as the total number of recovered (135,918), and a graph depicting the total number of cases over time.
For me at least this additional information changes the impression I have of the status of the COVID epidemic in Germany. They don’t have 169,430 cases in Germany but actually 33,512 cases. The graph also shows a clear downward trend in the amount of new cases. This would imply that whatever it is they are doing, it seems to be working.
Consolidation
I wish more news outlets would present data in this form. However, more often than not, the media has a tendency of chasing ratings. They would rather show us sensationalised content in order to generate ratings and clicks. As a result we are, or at least I am, left with a dissatisfied feeling. A feeling that something is missing. Additionally, I always get the impression that the media leverages the human tendency to weight the negative information more than the positive. Let’s say you were praised by more than 100 people today, but criticised by one. At the end of the day your brain will be focusing on that one criticism. This is employed all the time by those who wish to influence and manipulate the masses, and the media is no exception.
The purpose of this site is to try and consolidate information in order to provide a more clear overview of the global situation, to form a comprehensive story of the facts. This idea does not apply only to the coronavirus pandemic, but is applicable for other such topics. For example climate change. However, I will have to see how this site goes before I decide to expand it beyond the topic of COVID 19.
Even though this site is live and active I am still working on expanding it further. Like adding this “About Page”, forums, contact forms and more. So bear with me, if things don’t work or if things go out of hand in the comments section you can give me a head up via the contact form (which is yet to be implemented).
Thank you for taking the time to visit. I look forward to see what you all think, and if you find anything on here useful.