Tag: coronavirus deaths

The data on coronavirus deaths doesn’t tell the story Trump claims it does

Washington Post logoOne of the perplexing things about the way President Trump uses numbers is the randomness. At times, he simply invents data, as with his repeated insistences that his approval among Republicans is at 96 percent. At others, he uses out-of-date or cherry-picked data to make his case. And sometimes it’s just a hodgepodge, numbers and comparisons picked seemingly at random, offered less as evidence of his thesis than as evidence-like tidbits meant to make his thesis seem more robust.

So we have this tweet, from Monday afternoon.

Few have mastered the art of jamming more information into fewer characters than Trump, so we’ll set aside for now the “China Virus” elocution and the phrase “Lamestream Fake News Media” beyond to say that each is formatted in the same way: a noun modified by pejoratives. Let’s instead consider the evidence-ish numbers Trump presents, that reduction of deaths by 39 percent and the low mortality rate. Continue reading.

Ex-OSHA officials sound alarm as Trump quietly issues guidance telling corporations they don’t have to record coronavirus cases among workers

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s Labor Department has quietly issued guidance informing most employers in the United States that they will not be required to record and report coronavirus cases among their workers because doing so would supposedly constitute an excessive burden on companies.

The new rules, released Friday by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), were met with alarm by public health experts and former Labor Department officials who said the new rules are an absurd attack on transparency that could further endanger frontline workers.

Because COVID-19 is officially classified as a recordable illness, employers would typically be required to notify OSHA of coronavirus cases among their workers. Continue reading.