Item — HN Reader

I noticed a couple of strange things:

- The chart shows a peak (10 out of 10,000 hospitalized) around Jan 2018 for this season, yet the tweet from the CDC below the chart, and dated Feb 6th claims that "#flu activity continues to increase across the US". It seems that the chart shows that the activity is now decreasing since Jan, not increasing.

- The fun little game that simulates how the flu spreads based on a percentage of vaccination seems to follow rules that bias the results significantly for a dramatic effect. For example, a vaccinated person seems to never get infected ever, even though we know that the vaccine has about 10% efficiency this year. Even if it were another efficiency value, you'd expect to see some amount of vaccinated people get sick. In addition to this, it seems that if you are not vaccinated and you are adjacent to a sick person, you will automatically get the flu guaranteed.

What am I misunderstanding?

1 comments

-You can have a high level of #flu activity but a low level of severity. More people complain about having it, but they don't need to go to the hospital over it.

-They want you to get vaccinated more than they want to show you an accurate model of how the flu spreads.

> More people complain about having it, but they don't need to go to the hospital over it.

It seems that even the number of reports to the CDC (without hospitalization) has been decreasing after the peak of Jan. See https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

> They want you to get vaccinated more than they want to show you an accurate model of how the flu spreads

Agreed, but you'd think there are arguments and facts that don't need to be twisted to make their point. Bending the truth can accomplish the opposite of what they intended to do.

A common reaction to this kind of method is "if they're going to exaggerate and lie about this, what else are they lying about when it comes to flu vaccination?" - it destroys credibility quite quickly and fuels conspiracy theories.