I've been tracking the coronavirus pandemic on a more-or-less daily basis since March of 2020. The pandemic waxes and wanes but what's interesting (to me) is to note how the media coverage has changed since the inauguration of Biden administration.
Here's some data, taken from the Coronavirus Website, created by a then high school student. While I obviously can't vouch for the accuracy of the data, it is the longest-running of the coronavirus trackers I've seen and remarkably consistent in its data. Here's a quick summary, from when I started tracking in March of 2020 through today (October 30,2021). I've divided the data by administrations:
Trump administration (3/14/2020 - 1/21/2021): 419,603 deaths, divided by 10 for an average monthly rate of 41,960.You may have seen media touting the death rate in 2021 higher than 2020. That is true if you take 12/31/2020 as the cutoff date, but I used 1/21/2021 (the date the administration changed hands) and that point was essentially during the peak as shown in the chart below.
Biden administration (1/21/2021 - 10/30/2021): 346,434 deaths, divided by 9 for an average monthly rate of 38,493.
Not so today. Under the Biden administration, it's mask and vaccination mandates that are de rigueur in the media coverage.
Why? Well it's pretty obvious that even with introduction of vaccines (which predates the Biden administration, by the way) the average number of deaths per day hasn't declined; in fact, there has been a very slight, almost negligible uptick in the long-term trend line (not shown in the above chart).
So masks and vaccinations have to be the media's metric of choice, and since they're not convincing, mandates are required.
The gist of all this is that America (and the world) has moved on. Coronavirus is a fact of life and we're going to have to live with it and move on with living.
The Biden administration should be as smart as the American people.
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