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A comment on CDC Confirms H5N1 Bird Flu Infection in California Child: First Child Case in US. Parent comment

Re:CDC Confirms H5N1 Bird Flu Infection in California Child:... by Terr_ on Saturday November 23, 2024 @08:53PM (#42225385)
> more votes than anyone had ever received prior to that.

That fact falls into a whole class of "new records" which sound impressive but are usually meaningless, because it's closer to the default outcome.

In this case, the voting-age population was (yet again) going to increase, so each "new record" in votes cast becomes boringly-normal rather than unusually interesting. The same also happens with certain dollar-amount records, which are not adjusted for inflation or overall economy growth.

A similar phenomenon to https://xkcd.com/1138/ , except it has to do with trends over time rather than geographically.

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Re:CDC Confirms H5N1 Bird Flu Infection in California Child:... by bandyaboot on Wednesday November 27, 2024 @01:06AM (#42253393)
While it’s true that setting a new record isn’t unusual, in the case of 2020, the turnout was actually very high even taking into account population growth.
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