Lies, damn lies & statistics, in perspective
It’s hell out there — and the coronavirus is the least of it.
Although it’s the coronavirus that’s getting the excitable news coverage, flu in any given year runs up some scary numbers. Some 29 million Americans came down with flu in the 2019-2020 flu season, 280,000 were hospitalized and 16,000 died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In some years flu deaths approach 50,000.
But 50,000 flu deaths is nothing compared with gun deaths. Or so says Joe Biden, anyway.
He says gun deaths since 2007 have winnowed America’s population by one-half. Yes, he declared there have been 150 million gun deaths in the last 13 years.
That’s an epidemic if there ever was such a thing.
That’s 11.5 million gun deaths a year, So now we’re only half as big a nation as we were in 2007. Had you noticed how empty the streets were looking out there?
Biden’s numbers must have been correct or he wouldn’t have spouted them in a nationally televised debate, right? The news media moderators would have pounced and challenged him on the spot, no?
Here are some other astounding “facts” emerging from the ongoing political rhetoric:
— A rising tide of white supremacism is terrorizing America, a trend way more worrisome than jihadi extremism.
— There’s a mounting “epidemic” of violence against abortion clinics.
— And there’s a tsunami of “hate crime” breaking over the nation with a resounding crash.
Yes, it’s hell out there. Terrible, horrible place, America is. Godawful. Or is it, actually? Since Joe Biden is still at large, along with another statistics-spewing candidate for President, maybe we should have a second look at the “facts.”
Let’s start with those “150 million” gun deaths.
The number is not really 150 million, of course. The sum is just a tad smaller than that. Actually, there were 14,540 firearms homicides in 2017 and 23,850 firearms suicides,according to CDC figures.
Well, President Trump tells some stretchers, too, doesn’t he?
Yes, he does, and the news media swarm all over him for it.
NBC, for example, administered Trump a stern finger-wagging for exaggerating the number of emails under subpoena that Hillary Clinton destroyed in apparent defiance of the law. Trump said 33,000 when the actual total was “only” 31,100.
Furthermore, Trump said Clinton destroyed the subpoenaed emails with acid wash when she actually used a computer program called BleachBit. On such matters, NBC, is a curious stickler for fastidious accuracy.
The numbers for firearms deaths are, yes, unsettling, no disputing that.
But thank goodness they’re not in the neighborhood of 150 million, or anywhere near that figure.
An additional 486 gun deaths in 2019 were listed as accidental. But compare that with 38,800 accidental traffic deaths for the same year, according to the CDC.
Hey, then, isn’t it high time for sensible vehicular-control legislation?
Do drivers really need all that horsepower?
Do Americans really need 272 million motor vehicles, given all of those traffic deaths?
Isn’t it time for automobile buy-backs? For unsafe car confiscations?
Returning to the firearms data, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Americans own even more guns than cars — 393 million.
Taking into account the 39,770 annual total gun deaths, that figure, then, works out to 0.00010 fatalities per gun. Or to 0.00014 gun fatalities per household.
So as troubling as the numbers are in human terms, they’re thankfully mathematically minuscule when put in those decimal perspectives.
Moving on through the grim-reaper data, we come to 67,367 annual drug overdoses (CDC, 2018). Oddly, these deaths get little attention from the candidates.
Might not such a sum be labelled an epidemic? Maybe. But if so, you’d think there’d be more talk about it on the campaign trail. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of worry about drugs.
Indeed, “medicinal” and recreational marijuana legalization are gaining support across the country. And more and more cities and states are dispensing needles to heroin addicts and talking about opening “safe injection sites” for them.
The plan evidently is to cope with drug abuse by making it more accessible and convenient.
While political rhetoric doesn’t seem to have a lot to say about the 67,367 annual drug overdose deaths, it is, however, generating massive volumes of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) carbon dioxide emissions — i.e., hot air — over other matters of supposed epidemic proportion.
For example, an “epidemic of violence” against abortion providers.
That’s the very terms the National Abortion Federation uses. The federation cites, in support of the claim,125 instances of vandalism and 15 instances of assault and battery in 2018.
As disturbing as even such modest numbers are, in a nation of 327 million, do they really constitute an “epidemic of violence”?
The most fearsome statistic the abortion federation musters seems to be the number 21,252 — for “online hate crimes.” Annoying prolife fanatics mouthing off, apparently. Ah, if only there were “a procedure” to dispense with such inconenience as there is with pregnancy.
A federation report for the years 1977-2017 cites 8,812 instances of “violence.” That’s an average 220 incidents a year for the period, not exactly a colossal sum. They included 11 murders, 42 fire bombings and 117 arsons over the 40 years.
Deplorable numbers, certainly, and fully worthy of prosecution and prevention. But “epidemic”?
For what it’s worth, let us add this statistical perspective: In 2017, according to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, abortion clinics eliminated 862,320 fetuses. The rate of eliminated African American fetuses was 27.1 per 1,000
females of child-bearing age. That was nearly three times the rate of eliminated fetuses of white females in that age range, 10 per 1,000.
To put the data in another perspective, that’s roughly 3,920 fetuses eliminated annually for every incident of violence against abortion clinics.
Here’s another “fact” the presidential campaign rhetoric keeps churning out: America is in the throes — supposedly — of white supremacism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia. Sounds like, to use the term President Trump once did about certain Third World places, a “s— thole” of a country.
While the nation was fretting over jihadi terrorism after the unprecedented, barbaric attacks of 9/11, an “epidemic” — that word again — of “hate crimes” snuck up on us. Or so it is suggested.
Do the numbers actually
support the label “epidemic”? Well, let’s see.
In 2018, there were 7,120 hate-crime incidents reported to police, according to FBI data — mostly vandalism, name-calling, threats, dumb-ass things of that nature. That’s more incidents than an ideal society would prefer. But in a country of 327 million people, is it an “epidemic”?
If 7,120 hate crimes constitute an epidemic, what do we then say of the 283,061 robberies, the 870,710 aggravated assaults, the 139,380 rapes and the 1,230,149 burglaries that same year (FBI statistics)?
Violent and nonviolent crime rates actually have been trending downward, although the total numbers of crimes, as those just cited show, are far from a negligible sum.
Meanwhile, you hear the candidates fussing a lot more over the comparatively few abortion clinic attacks and hate crimes than, say, immigrant crime.
Immigrant crime is, indeed, virtually a verboten topic, especially among
candidates who favor looking the other way when it comes to illegal immigration and enforcement of border security. The topic of alien crime is largely avoided by media and government agencies alike.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) does, however, venture to compile “criminal alien statistics.”
If you find the term offensive, take it up with the GAO. That’s the official term it uses. (U.S. statutory law, by the way, uses the term illegal alien, not the de rigueur “undocumented.”)
The GAO’s 2018 report lists 208,800 criminal aliens in overcrowded federal and state prisons, at an annual incarceration cost to U.S. taxpayers of $1.42 billion.
The report lists the following number of offenses those criminal aliens committed, 2011-2016: narcotics trafficking, 336,600; assaults, 108,400; thefts, 70,300; burglaries, 44,900; firearms offenses, 44,500; robberies, 13,500; motor vehicle thefts, 19,500; sex offenses, also 13,500; homicides,
6,000 and kidnappings, 5,600 — over 2 million offenses total.
That was, the GAO report adds, an “average of about 10 offenses per criminal alien.”
Maybe, precisely speaking, those numbers don’t reflect what you would call an “epidemic” of alien crime. The numbers reflect, after all, “only” 1,200 murders a year by criminal aliens.
But the numbers do pack a more of a dramatic punch than, say, the comparatively piddling number of “hate crimes.”
And how do the 7,120 annual hate-crimes stack up against, for example, the jihadi terrorism numbers?
Jihadi numbers aren’t easy to come by. Perhaps the data compilers fear being condemned as Islamophobes.
There’s one website, though — “Jihad Watch” — that does dare to take a crack at maintaining a data base.
The website says that since 9/11, there have been 53 Islamist-linked terror attacks in the United
States in which 158 Americans were killed.
Maybe that’s not a statistic of epidemic magnitude, either. But it’s surely enough to warrant wary vigilance and reasonable precautions.
That’s 158 deaths in 19 years at the hands of jihadi fanatics, in contrast to 11 deaths in 40 years at the hands of anti-abortion fanatics, if you’re keeping score. According to Jihad Watch’s numbers, by the way, there have been 36,000 Islamist-linked terrorist fatalities worldwide since 9/11.
Jihad Watch’s ideological foes typically describe it as “far right” and/or “Islamophobic.” But at least
the website gives dates, places and descriptions for each terrorism incident it cites, taking the information from law enforcement and mainstream media reports. While Jihad Watch itself is called nasty names, its numbers haven’t been credibly challenged.
In any event, it used to be that political rhetoric produced inflated promises. Nowadays they produce inflated claims of catastrophic “epidemics” as well.
In this political season, the old “Don’t take any wooden nickels” seems to be — still — a sound piece of advice.