The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought science to the fore of the public discourse and considering the complexity of the issues involved, with it also the challenge of effective and informative science communication. A particularly contentious topic, in that it is both highly emotional in and of itself, as well as in that it sits at the nexus of the decision-making process regarding the handling of the pandemic, which has effected lockdowns, social behaviour measures, business closures, and others, concerns the recording and the reporting of the disease mortality. To clarify a point which has caused much controversy and anger in the public debate, the first part of the present article discusses the very fundamentals underlying the issue of causative attribution with regards to mortality, lays out the foundations of the statistical means of mortality estimation, and concretizes these by analysing the recording and reporting practices adopted in England, and their widespread misrepresentations. The second part of the article is empirical in nature. I present data and an analysis of how COVID-19 mortality has been reported in the mainstream media in the UK and the USA, including a comparative analysis both across the two countries as well as across different media outlets. The findings clearly demonstrate a uniform and worrying lack of understanding of the relevant technical subject matter by the media in both countries. Of particular interest is the finding that with a remarkable regularity ($\rho>0.998$) the greater the number of articles a media outlet published on COVID-19 mortality, the greater the \emph{proportion} of its articles misrepresented the disease mortality figures.
翻译:正在发生的COVID-19大流行病使科学成为公众讨论的焦点,并考虑到所涉问题的复杂性,同时也是有效和信息丰富的科学交流的挑战。一个特别有争议的议题是,它本身具有高度的情绪性,而且它处于处理该流行病的决策进程的核心,这导致了封锁、社会行为措施、企业关闭和其他方面的记录和报告疾病死亡率。为了澄清在公众辩论中引起很大争议和愤怒的一个问题,本文章第一部分讨论了与死亡率有关的原因归属问题背后的非常根本的问题,为死亡率估计统计手段奠定了基础,并通过分析英格兰采用的记录和报告做法及其广泛的歪曲来具体化这些问题。该文章的第二部分涉及记录和报告疾病死亡率问题。我介绍了英国和美国主流媒体是如何报道COVID-19死亡率的数据和分析,包括两国以及两国对死亡率的比较分析,以及不同媒体渠道对死亡率的归属问题,为死亡率估算统计手段的基础,并通过分析英格兰采用的记录和报告做法以及这些做法的广泛歪曲了这些问题。文章的第二部分涉及实证性质。我介绍了英国和美国主流媒体是如何报道COVID-19死亡率的,包括两国和两国对死亡率的比较性分析。9 媒体界对相关文章的准确性缺乏一个令人忧虑的结论。