A Greater COVID-19 Danger: Misinformation

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.  – Prophet Hosea (710 BC) 

The financial firm, Franklin Templeton, has teamed up with Gallup to determine people’s behavioral responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Their hypothesis: What people know and don’t know about the pandemic will play a crucial role in shaping the economic recovery. 

Maybe you’d like to participate in part of the survey.   If so, write down your answer to three of the questions based on what you know about the COVID-19 pandemic.  Here you go:  What percentage of total COVID deaths have occurred among Americans…
(1)  …age 55 or older?
(2)  …age 44 and younger?
(3)  …age 24 and younger?

COVID-19 Risk:  Survey Results
Now, let’s compare your answers to the actual COVID-19 mortality statistics from US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), as of July 22, 2020.  First, in order to make you feel better in case your answers are far from the actual percentages, here is part of the conclusion made by authors of the “Franklin Templeton–Gallup Economics of Recovery Study:”

These results are nothing short of stunning.  Six months into this pandemic, Americans still dramatically misunderstand the risk of dying from COVID-19.

Maybe you will be "stunned" as well.  To compare your responses with the responses of Americans included in the survey when the three questions were asked, here are the results:

Based on this sampling from the survey, can you see the stunning discrepancy between perceived health threat of COVID-19 and reality?  Amazingly, in spite of Americans having access the best health care system in the world and excellent access to information at our fingertips, we demonstrate a stunning misunderstanding of the risk of death from COVID-19.  

As the table below suggests, Americans 65 and older are much more aware of the heightened risk for their own age group.  On the other hand, the younger the age group polled the more misled Americans are about their risk of negative health consequences from the virus.  Shockingly, school- and college-age young people (age 24 and younger) overestimated the danger of COVID-19 by a factor of 40!!

What is even more unfortunate and even frightening is the way in which the misinformation causes fear among us.  The table below clearly shows the increasing fear of negative health consequences among the younger age groups in spite of the lowered risk of death from COVID-19.

The following statement from the Franklin Templeton report summarizes how misinformation can be used to generate fear and influence partisan outcomes (emphasis mine):

Fear and anger are the most reliable drivers of engagement; scary tales of young victims of the pandemic, intimating that we are all at risk of dying, quickly go viral; so do stories that blame everything on your political adversaries. Both social and traditional media have been churning out both types of narratives in order to generate more clicks and increase their audience.

Media and Partisanship Blamed
The more access we have to information about risks to our health and well being the greater the likelihood that we will make decisions that favor our safety and minimize our fears.  If this claim is true and the survey data is accurate, how can Americans make good decisions based on risk to personal health if they misunderstand the risk.  The same applies to making good policy decisions on the part of policymakers.

For instance, if the risk of death among school and college age young people is less than 0.2%, how can we justify closing classrooms and canceling sports?  If the survey results are accurate, the current debates about whether or not to open classrooms and schedule school or college sports this Fall are being made by poorly informed administrators, educators, students, athletes, parents, and policymakers.  But never mind the actual data.  If the media and political actors can create the “perception” of greater risk than reality, then they can use a falsely generated fear to manipulate us to follow unrealistic guidelines.

Proof of media involvement in creating a misinformed public is seen in the differences in responses between those who identify as Democrats and those identifying as Republicans.    “People who get their information predominantly from social media have the most erroneous and distorted perception of risk.  Those who identify as Democrats tend to mistakenly overstate the risk of death from COVID-19 for younger people much more than Republicans.”  Most cable news watchers are aware of the vast difference in messaging between CNN or MSNBC and FoxNews.

The Franklin Templeton/Gallup survey predicts that if “…those who can afford it are willing to pay significantly more for extra perceived safety, we might see a significant rise in inflation down the line.  Again, misinformation can lead to unwarranted fear which in turn makes a population vulnerable to manipulation in directions that fit partisan priorities and visions for a restructured American government and society.

It is becoming clear that misinformation and resultant unwarranted fear may be the greater threat from the COVID-19 pandemic.  Consider the following statement from the survey report:

From a public interest perspective, we believe the top priority should be better information and a less partisan, more fact-based public debate.  The fact that a large share of the population overestimates the COVID-19 danger to the young will make a targeted public health response more difficult to agree on. We think it is also likely to delay the recovery, causing a deeper and prolonged recession.

We Need to Be Informed
Maybe it is time we devote some extra time to becoming accurately informed by doing our own research and making decisions accordingly.  At the same time, we who are called to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12: 31) need to deal graciously with those who are more fearful of negative health consequences whether or not their fear is warranted. 

Hopefully, readers who look in more detail at the Franklin Templeton and Gallup Survey will be better informed and able to articulate truth to neighbors who are misled or confused.  Otherwise, the greater risk may not be COVID-19.  Instead, we may experience very dire consequences to our culture and nation from those who seek to use the virus for selfish political motives.

Remember the words from the Prophet Hosea, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4: 6).  If you’d like to stay informed as the survey continues to expand over the coming months, you can receive ongoing updates on the project's findings by signing up here.  

What Do You Think?
Do you consider yourself well informed about the pandemic?  How well did you score on the opening three polling questions?  If you’d like to respond to this blog with comments or questions, just use the “Comments” link below, or contact me at silviusj@gmail.com   Thank you for reading, and may God honor your efforts to be informed, make good decisions, and inform others as we try to learn how best to respond to the pandemic and the politics surrounding it.