Panic! (but the disco's closed)

I've been thinking, recently.  And I think the media, as a whole, should be burned at the stake.  This panic is entirely, and without exception, their fault. 

Everybody panicking?  Either believes every bit of info being pushed, spread, exaggerated, and disseminated by the media...or believes nothing of it, and there's so much media shit that they can't find* real information.  Or the statistics that they can find are in news stories, and they can't trust that those haven't been twisted (they have). 

And social media isn't helping, for the most part.  I mean, the groups I'm a member of are mostly really smart, and have inroads in finding the information (and experience in interpreting it) that a lot of other groups lack, but they're not able to get that information out there in a wide enough spread.  And then again, when they try, other individuals often accuse them of "drinking the kool-aid."  Because the raw data contradicts what the media's been pushing.  Hell, it contradicts the computer projections some of the so-called experts** have been citing.

It's also, for the USA, contradicting what's happened in China, North Korea, and Italy.  I've got theories on that, and on why Japan hasn't been hit so hard (nor has South Korea, really).  And no, my theories have nothing to do with race, like I've been hearing people accuse others of.  It's culture.  It's nutrition levels.  It's the overall percentage of the population that smokes.  It's the overall percentage of the population that vaccinates.

The cited and projected death rates aren't real.  The media, while not making it up out of whole cloth, are pushing an unrealistic projection, and really screaming the stories of the people who'd had it bad enough they almost died, could have died, or did die*** while hushing the numbers who've recovered, or had been barely symptomatic.  And downplaying how few of us have been tested in the first place.  



*Half the ones that find the raw data and statistics--which, admittedly, isn't easy, and a lot of it may be behind academic or other paywalls--can't make sense of them.  So, I suppose, education can also be blamed for part of the panic.  

**You know what we call "experts" that believe computer modeling over real-world data? The kind that massage the data to fit the computer models, and actively engage in sample bias?  Frauds.   

***I've heard of several younger people who've died.  Previously counted healthy, but potentially with things that often start in middle age and gone undiagnosed, or health workers who've likely depressed their own immune systems through the exhaustion of caring for others.