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A comment on Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news? by skellington on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @03:04AM (#33417934)
Sure, so I guess you're being willingly misled here because the most important thing is dunking on red states due to your politics. So, if some random article says "Dallas is less safe than NYC," you are forced to believe it even though the article weighted covid vaccine rate at 90% and murder at 10%.
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Re:Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news? by tomjakubowski on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @03:21AM (#33418038)
The average American is much more likely to die from Covid than from murder (and, in the recent past, Covid was the far more likely fate), so this doesn't seem crazy on its face.
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Re:Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news? by cudgy on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @08:24AM (#33420216)
What is an average American?
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Re:Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news? by socialismisok on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @10:53AM (#33422018)
The number of deaths divided by the number of Americans. The phrase "average American" is shorthand for "statistically across all Americans".
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Re:Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news? by leereeves on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @12:07PM (#33423157)
Sure, but the relevant statistic is Covid death rate, not vaccination rate. And by death rate, Texas is actually #21 (#1 being best) among states and surprisingly safer than New York:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

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Re:Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news? by socialismisok on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @10:57AM (#33422085)
I have no interest in dunking on red states or praising blue ones. I think that divide is both stupid and missing the point. We're way better served by looking at things like class divide, imo.

Also, the methodology gave murders per Capita double weight and vaccine percentages double weight. Both are numbers bound between 0 and 1, and both have a significant impact on population safety.

So no, I'd much rather talk about why someone would make those weightings and what the correct ratings should be using a statistical analysis mixed with some judgements of how safe I feel in the face of those statistics.

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