As I’ve said many times, there are a few hard and fast rules for dealing with the mainstream media. First, never believe a headline. Second, when an article claims, “science says…” or “new study shows…”, automatically assume that it doesn’t.
Third and most important of all, always, always, assume that “fact-checkers” are trying to bullshit you.
Because you’ll be right, nearly every time.
The latest case in point: even when the taxpayer-funded leftist propaganda unit broadcaster is dragged, kicking and screaming, into admitting that a conservative politician is, shock, horror, correct, they have to fudge around it.
In an April 16 media conference, [Scott Morrison] said New Zealand had imposed a “state of even more extreme lockdown” than Australia, but had been less successful at suppressing the virus after accounting for population size.
“New Zealand decided to go a lot further, but I’d note that the outcomes we are getting are actually on a per capita basis actually better than what is happening in New Zealand,” Mr Morrison said.
Is it correct that Australia achieved better per capita outcomes, even though New Zealand “decided to go a lot further” with its economic and social lockdown? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
Mr Morrison’s claim is a fair call.
Note that they can’t bring themselves to just say, “correct”. Which he is. Instead, they have to hem and haw and all but place it in scare quotes.
What’s odd, though, is that, given their justification, they’ve oddly seemed to give Morrison a lenient benefit of the doubt. There must have been a new kid on that day, who didn’t know the iron rule of ABC “fact checks”: never, ever admit that a conservative is right. No doubt the poor kid was given a thorough re-education and won’t make that mistake again.
Still, that doesn’t make their justification anything other than a wool-pulling exercise.
His suggestion that Australia achieved “better” outcomes on a per capita basis than New Zealand can be approached from several angles, including total confirmed cases per capita, new daily cases per capita, the total number of deaths per capita, or the number of daily deaths per capita.
Australia has not achieved a better outcome than New Zealand in terms of total (cumulative) cases per capita.
Nor has Australia achieved a better result on the number of total confirmed deaths per capita.
Um, excuse me?
According to the well-regarded Worldometer data-tracking website, Australia has 6,875 cumulative cases. New Zealand has 1,488. Unless my maths (or, more correctly, my Excel spreadsheet) is very wrong, that comes to 268 cases per million for Australia, 309 per million for New Zealand.
When it comes to deaths, Australia has 3.7 per million and New Zealand has 4.3 per million.
Australia has clearly outperformed New Zealand.
Perhaps that’s why the “fact checker” only counted data up til 15 April – three weeks ago.
Of course, their excuse would be that they’re “fact checking” Morrison’s statement on 16 April, but their own article admits that later information would provide a clearer picture (indeed, the data shows that New Zealand has generally lagged about a month behind Australia). It’s surely just coincidental that, a month ago, the picture was less clear.
If they were honest enough to check the latest data (the article was published on 6 May), the picture would be much clearer. Still lagging a month behind Australia, New Zealand has fared markedly worse.
Still, they have to do whatever they can to avoid committing the heresies of admitting either that a conservative politician is right, or that their “Socialist Barbie” Jacinda Ardern might be less than perfect.
I mean, if they were forced to admit that Ardern’s draconian lockdowns have had little impact on the course of the virus, why, they might even have to admit that she is – gasp! – incompetent.
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