Accen-tuate the Negative, Eli-minate the Positive

If you get that reference, you're old. Welcome to the club.

It's a play on an old song written by Johnny Mercer in 1944. It has been covered by numerous artists over the years: the Lennon Sisters, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke, even Paul McCartney, as recently as 2012, for you young whipper-snappers.

The song actually goes, "Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative." And it cites doing so as the key to happiness. So why are we all so unhappy right now, besides some of us being scared out of their wits that if they go outside, they may become gravely ill, or worse; and some of us tired of what they perceive as their rights being trampled on, and ready to just go back to work and get back to life?

The media.

The media - I can't even use the word "news" anymore, it doesn't exist - has been trying to scare people into the first camp all along, and incite others into the second camp, through an intentional campaign of misinformation. On either side of the health vs. economic impact argument, they consistently highlight, exaggerate and mis-state the negative, and bury the positive.

My alter ego posted a picture on Facebook of a TV set with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on the screen. Next to his head was the ubiquitous case and death count in the U.S. from COVID-19, that by now have probably been burned-in to all our screens. It showed nearly 3 million cases in the U.S. And the banner at the bottom of the screen screamed, "U.S. DEATH COUNT APPROACHES 3 MILLION."

Incompetent? Perhaps. The media talking heads are all, by and large, under-educated buffoons. But more likely it was intentional. Get one person, one math-challenged person (and they're everywhere, folks) to believe the banner, and they'll tell their friends, who'll tell their friends, who'll post it on Facebook and Instagram and even Nextdoor, for crying out loud. And then you get them all coming back for more, huddled in front of the TV in abject terror or uncontrolled rage, riveted to the screen, waiting for more doom and gloom.

What's even more interesting about the picture I posted?

Facebook took it down.

Social media is complicit in fomenting panic. They don't want people to see the hypocrisy, incompetence and/or intentional misinformation displayed by the media.

They want it shared.

The other night, I was watching one of the major cable networks. The anchor first interviewed Gov. Burgum of North Dakota. She said, "You're re-opening your state, but the number of cases is increasing. Why are you re-opening?" Would you have needed to wait for the governor to respond? I sure didn't. Reported cases are increasing everywhere, because of MORE TESTING. North Dakota ranks 47th among U.S. states in population. Care to venture a guess as to its rank based on testing per capita?

Fourth. FOURTH. Behind Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts. (My home state of Kansas is dead-last, in spite of ranking 35th in population, which is proof that for some governors, it's easier to shut down a state than it is to run it.)

So of course more cases are being reported if there's more testing. That has happened, and is happening, everywhere.

Gov. Burgum responded by saying, "We're doing more testing." Duh. "North Dakota ranks fourth among all states in testing per capita," he went on to boast. Which anyone can find out with a simple web search. The anchor went on to say, a few sentences later, "Of course cases are increasing because of testing, that's obvious."

So why ask the stupid question in the first place? It could be that she was saving face for not knowing the reason, not getting the obvious correlation, not having done her homework, like competent journalists used to do before the breed went extinct. More likely she knew all along that testing was the reason for the increase, but was hoping some uninformed viewer would hear her question, freak out, go get some Ho-Hos to fear-binge on, and miss the rest of the interview.

But wait, there's more. Her next guest was Ohio Gov. DeWine. She kicked off her interview by citing the hopelessly flawed IHME model, which I have debunked numerous times. She noted that the model showed that it had been six days since cases in Ohio peaked, and the model indicated that it wouldn't be safe to re-open the state until May 14, yet Ohio was opening some businesses as early as April 29. "Aren't you jumping the gate?" she asked.

Anybody with even a minimal amount of intelligence is looking at the data, not the model - from Drs. Birx and Fauci, to the governors who have done a good job throughout this mess. And the "gate," referring to the gating criteria for re-opening, is based on data, not on the model. So what does the data say?

Well, the data shows that new deaths in Ohio peaked on April 22, three days after the date the model shows they peaked.So one might surmise that the model is pretty close.

Except the model was last revised on April 22, three days after its forecast peak. So at that point it reported the peak had already been reached, even though deaths continued to climb for a few days. The previous revision, made April 17, "forecast" the peak would be reached on April 16. Oops. The April 10 revision said April 10. Oops again. The initial public release said April 21, which was actually more accurate than any of the subsequent revisions.

Does that mean the initial release of the model was "right?" No, it proves the old adage that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

This anchor's next guest was the creator of the IHME model himself. She asked him why the model's numbers were still going up. (Let's conveniently ignore the fact that the actual numbers of new daily cases and deaths are going down. That would be way too positive. The media's job is to crush hope, not inspire it, and foment panic, not reason.)

The modeler cited several factors, including more presumptive cases (in other words, not tested and proven, but hey, even though they might just have the flu, we'll say they have COVID); protracted flat peaks in some states (he specifically cited New York, but neither the actual data nor the man's own model show a protracted flat peak in that state - look it up); and -

The model uses actual cases as a leading indicator! And we already established that actual cases are going up, right? And we already established that the reason is more testing, correct? So the more we test, the more the model is going to predict will die. That's probably true, but the actual data will continue to show the mortality rate falling significantly as testing is increased, while the model will continue to assume the same inflated mortality rate that has rendered it useless all along.

Did the anchor draw any conclusions on behalf of viewers, such as pointing out that since testing results in increased reported cases, and the model uses cases as a leading indicator, it's always going to show increasing numbers? Did she question the model's veracity?

She did not. She left viewers with the impression that the model is accurate. But she had no problem challenging the governors who were re-opening their states, even though they're doing that based on data, which is what the gating requirements dictate. The media are well aware that viewers are unlikely to actually look at the model or the data to determine whether New York's peak is actually flat and protracted. Nor are they likely to understand the model's flaws, or review the actual data. They're banking on being people's only source of (mis)information, so they can create either fear of the virus, or anger over the response. Or both - often within the same anchor's time slot.

(A quick note about the model's projected "safe" re-opening dates: that's a new wrinkle the modelers added after the re-opening guidelines were released. I've looked at it state-by-state, and it has no basis in the actual data. It should be based on that data and tied to the gating requirements, but it is not. It's not even looking at testing numbers. It also still shows many states exhausting health care resources like ICU beds and facing shortages, when in fact no state has. I'm not sure why they bother keeping the model running, other than to get on TV every other day.)

The local outlets are equally complicit, for the most part. On April 29, Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas announced the most onerous re-opening requirements of any jurisdiction I've seen to date. Businesses can only re-open after May 15, and then at only 10% capacity - not the 25-50% or more established by most jurisdictions. When the announcement was made, I questioned why a restaurant would bother if it's already doing decent carry-out business.

After the press conference, a local TV station posted on Facebook that it had talked to business owners in attendance, and all of them supported the requirements. The post quoted two business owners. I was skeptical; what are the chances that 100% of business owners in attendance support such draconian restrictions? And can we extrapolate that sample to all Kansas City businesses?

Sure enough, in a radio interview the following morning, a prominent local chef and restaurateur stated that he was very much opposed to the plan, and was very upset about it. He said that it wasn't worth it to re-open at 10%, as I expected. He had tried to reach out to the Mayor's office, which was not responsive.

(The Mayor complained that other contiguous jurisdictions' health officials would not return his health commissioner's calls, yet he himself won't return his constituents' communications?)

Another local radio host said that he had heard from hundreds of local businesses, and not one of them was happy with the plan.

And yet the TV station, with a much larger audience, reports that no business owners are against it. Based on a sample size of two. Did they follow up with a larger sample? Talk to any other business owners? No - because that's not the narrative they're trying to shape in unsuspecting viewers' minds.

Besides local and national TV and print media, social media is out of control as well. I was watching the Kansas governor's press conference a couple of days ago. I was at my desk, so I was watching on Facebook, and could see the comments scrolling by. One commenter said that he had just learned that the state was going to extend the lockdown through October, and that they were deploying the National Guard the next day to enforce a mandatory 24-hour a day curfew. (The Kansas order expires May 3; the KC metro counties on the Kansas side are extending that by one week.)

People actually believed this person. They were terrified. This was the equivalent of me and my high school friends calling stores and asking if they had Prince Albert in a can (do a web search on the question if you're too young to get it), only far more cruel.

So you see? Individuals are preying on people's fear - and yes, gullibility - on social media, for sport. The TV media are doing the same, for ratings. Facebook is helping them all along - leaving the false comments like the one I noted above, but removing anything that exposes the panic-mongering.

All of which leads us to a simple rule: turn the TV off. Don't pay attention. Tune in to something else. Unfollow the fear-mongers and conspiracy theorists on your Facebook friends list. And, as always, go to the source.

I mentioned reason earlier. When it comes to the media, I'm led to paraphrase a very misogynistic statement made by Jack Nicholson's character in the film, "As Good as it Gets." In it, he plays a novelist who writes romance fiction. The character is bigoted, obnoxious and rude. When asked how he can write female characters so well, he replies, "It's easy. I start with a man, and I take away reason and accountability."

And that's the media - devoid of both traits, whether male or female.

I'll close with some good advice from the lyrics of another song, this one by John Prine, titled "Spanish Pipedream:"

"Blow up your TV, throw away your paper,
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches,
Try and find Jesus on your own."

Excuse me, while I go have a peach.