This is from the Gray Lady, the pinnacle of journalism. Is it disinformation, obfuscation, or manipulation?
They have intentionally written this to be deceptively unclear. After all, it is THE Gray Lady, who knows all, and tells some. Look at how many folks worship at her feet.
See, 1 in 31 presents the increase in small numbers, misleading in and of itself, and making a direct comparison with 2 to 4 per 10,000 as difficult as possible, in the hopes no one will do the conversion. That is by intent. This is where unit balance comes in, and as anyone who's used a slide rule can tell you, unit balances are indispensable. Yes. Those people still walk the earth.
So what are the real numbers, the ones you can easily compare?
Normalizing to cases per 10,000, we find that 1 in 31 is equivalent to 322.6 per 10,000. Wow! That is an increase, using 3 as the 1980 average, of over two orders of magnitude. Those slide rulers can tell you just how significant this really is. It is staggering. If you were part of an SRO crowd at Sanford Stadium, there were around 2900 "cases" there with you.
This is an enormous, consistent growth rate over four and a half decades. Is that the lede the Lady wants buried? Consider this: the 1980 cases have doubled every 6-7 years. Your 401K should do so well, for that long, because if you had made a one-time investment of $10,000 in 1980 you would be a millionaire now. Why would someone not want you to know something that significant?
Why does the Gray Lady want to bury this in obfuscation? Do they have an agenda, perhaps a political agenda? Are they so steeped in antithisadministrationalism that they will ignore the traditional obligation of the Fourth Estate to the truth? Have they completely sold out to partisanship?
If current political forces can do this to the Gray Lady, what hope is there for integrity in any corner of the Fourth Estate?
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