Category Archives: Covid19

DKE-19

Everyone has seen messages telling you we must “act today or people will die,” COVID-19 is basically just the flu, and/or that “flattening the curve is a deadly delusion.” These often have numbers, charts, citations, retroactively edited titles (“taksies backsies”), and data “science.”

Unfortunately, all of the above are signs of DKE-19, a highly contagious illness threatening the response against COVID-19. We must act today to flatten the curve of armchair epidemiology, or we will all be in peril.

What is DKE-19?

Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE) is a phenomenon where people lack the ability to understand their lack of ability. While strains of DKE typically circulate seasonally, a new and more virulent strain called DKE-19 is now reaching pandemic proportions.

Editor in Chief

As Trump took the podium at Thursday’s briefing, his effort to blame China for the spread of the coronavirus was evident in his briefing notes.

A Washington Post photographer captured a photo of Trump’s notes showing that the word “Corona” had been crossed out in his typed notes and replaced with “Chinese,” written by hand. Trump on Thursday repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as “the Chinese virus,” a phrase that critics have argued is racist and puts Asian Americans at risk.

He's apparently too stupid to remember his racism without notes.

Fact Checker Checker

This is Trump, speaking at one of his rallies recently:

“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs, you say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’, ‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’ They have no clue, they don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since he got in. It’s all turning, they lost. It’s all turning, think of it, think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country and because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.”

What do you think he is referring to when he says "And this is their new hoax" ? Sure, it's a bit of a meander to get there, but he's saying "Coronavirus" is "their new hoax", right?

This was too hard for the Washington Post "fact checker", though.

I bet she slept through the class where they taught about ellipses and how they can be used to trim parenthetical clauses in spoken English, so as to make the meaning clearer.