Lying with Statistics

Washington State Edition

Gato has posted an excellent piece regarding how the ‘experts’ use statistics to mislead the public. This dovetails nicely to a post about Washington State that I wanted to write.

Here in Washington, Inslee hypes the scariest numbers, and shoves aside those which attack the narrative. As a quick example, take a look at the movement of the ‘flatten the curve’ goalposts.

Goalpost 1: Licensed Beds Occupied by Patients

The most obvious metric of success. How busy are our hospitals? Turns out, not very busy at all. The first picture is the last day of data at this goalpost station. Our total occupancy hovered between 55-60% during the entire year. This is nearly empty as it pertains to regular hospital occupancy.

Goalpost 2: Adult Staffed Acute Care Beds Occupied by Patients

First all, moving the goalpost here was an admission that kids weren't much at risk for going to the hospital for covid. Of course Inslee and the Idiot Brigade never once mentioned that, later mandating masking at school and all sorts of other anti-kid rules. Moving the goalposts here had the effect of removing 5,500 beds from our supply. All of a sudden instead of 60% we were running at 83% and 'failing'. Note that actual hospital usage remains flat, and at the end you see the number of available beds falling. This is because of Inslee's stupid vax mandate. However, since that is inconvenient, we must move the goalposts again, to....

Goalpost 3: Percentage Only

On August 30, this data was 'moved', and on its new home it doesn't show the total number of beds at all, only the occupation percentage. Clearly the total number of beds has to be known to determine the percentage of beds that are taken, but because the information was getting to be problematic, it's simply removed.

This isn't an accident, and Washington isn't the only state doing this. The rampant misuse of data ALL IN THE SAME DIRECTION proves this is deliberate. Why would Inslee want the emergency to stop? He's getting to hand out MILLIONS of dollars to the politically connected. It's Christmas all year for those in government who spend your money.