 So we've talked about how most of the individuals not taking COVID-19 seriously, who are spreading misinformation about it and refusing to wear masks, are disproportionately right-wingers. Prominent right-wing figures are the ones who are downplaying the severity of it. Now maybe there's some exceptions to the rule here and I'm missing some conservatives and maybe I'm being too broad in my generalization, but nonetheless this is what I've seen. I hope that changes, but one example to kind of demonstrate this is that one prominent conservative is downplaying the severity of COVID-19 after it killed him. Yeah, I'm talking about Herman Cain because the official Twitter account for Herman Cain tweeted out an article with the headline which says, CDC now says 94% of COVID deaths had underlying and adds it looks like the virus is not as deadly as the mainstream media first made it out to be. Herman Cain died from COVID-19 and his account is tweeting out this garbage. Right-wingers are just ruthless and they are relentless and they stick to a narrative no matter how deadly that narrative is. I mean you'd think that this account of all wouldn't want to spread this sort of message downplayed the severity of COVID-19, but they're still doing it and this is kind of disgusting. Is this what Herman Cain would want? Like we don't know what he wants. We know that he didn't take it seriously and killed him, but would he have a change of tune after actually dying from it? Probably. So maybe don't tweet this out on his behalf when you don't know what you're talking about. Like if the CDC says that 94% of COVID deaths had underlying condition that doesn't necessarily mean automatically that it's not as serious as it is in actuality because you don't know what you're talking about. But this account is apparently now the Cain gang. They've rebranded so they're just taking this platform that Herman Cain built and they're using it to spread misinformation and downplay the severity of COVID-19 to the detriment of America. Classy. Now that headline that they shared is pretty misleading, but if you think that that means you should take COVID-19 less seriously, please don't because it is serious and that's not the case. So Rebecca Faulkner of Axios basically put out a fact sheet explaining that statistic. So she says a new Centers for Disease Control report shows 94% of people who died from COVID-19 in the United States had contributing health conditions. Yes, but Australian epidemiologist Gideon Myorwitz Katz noted in a blog post on Monday that the CDC estimates COVID-19 was the underlying cause of 95% of all deaths related to the virus. Only in 5% of deaths has it been listed as a contributing cause. This report doesn't mean that COVID isn't as bad as we thought. It's clear from the CDC statistics on excess deaths that more people are dying than usual because of COVID. The fact that common pre-existing medical conditions often coincide with deadly coronavirus infections is part of what makes it scary, not a reason to write it off. Torter removed a post earlier Sunday retweeted by President Trump for violating its rules with a false interpretation of the CDC's novel coronavirus data. The post incorrectly claimed the CDC had quietly updated its data to admit that only 6% of those listed in the US coronavirus death toll actually died from COVID and that the other 94% had two to three other serious illnesses CNN notes. The post by a supporter of a baseless conspiracy theory has since been deleted. Reality check, while the cause of death listed as solely from the coronavirus occurred in 6% of cases in the US from February 1st to August 22nd, this doesn't mean that the virus was not a contributing factor or indeed the leading cause in the other 94%. The US virus death toll will be much lower if this were the case. It's well established that people with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19. People can live with obesity, diabetes, or heart disease for years but get infected with COVID-19 and die quickly, CNN points out. For the record, the deaths with conditions or causes as well as COVID-19 on average were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death according to the CDC. Now this is what the CDC lists as underlying medical conditions that led to coronavirus deaths. They say influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, diabetes, vascular and unspecified dementia, cardiac arrest, heart failure, renal failure, intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning, and other adverse effects. Now honestly, I'm confused at what portion of the data Trump is trying to misrepresent because if COVID-19 leads to respiratory failure in someone but respiratory failure itself is ultimately what killed them, should that not count towards the COVID-19 death? If COVID-19 is what caused them to have respiratory failure? I mean what are we trying to misrepresent here? All I know is that Donald Trump is trying to make himself look good. Now I'm not going to suggest that like all conservatives are going to believe this misinformation or even spread it but I get that like some of them they're not just trying to spread this at the behest of Donald Trump if they are in fact doing that, maybe they just want to believe that this isn't as bad because it's really, it's scary, right? But all I know is that this is very serious and we have to take it seriously and we are still learning more and more so it's really unhelpful for large accounts, people with large followings to spread misinformation about this or downplay the severity of COVID-19. We're approaching 185,000 deaths from COVID-19, 185,000. If you're not taking it seriously then I don't know what to say, you're hurting everyone because if you don't take it seriously and you act carelessly then you help spread the virus. You help make it so that when we have to be in this state of lockdown constantly we all want this to be over. Like do they honestly believe that like the left is like yearning for an economic lockdown or they're yearning for COVID-19 to still be a thing and kill lots of Americans so it can help like Joe Biden? Like I'm trying to figure out if they honestly believe that the left and even Democrat centrists want this to be a thing for political reasons. That's not the case. I don't believe that anyone is looking at like the political benefits of COVID-19 or how this helps people politically or hurts Donald Trump. Like I don't care if we can get rid of COVID-19 like that even knowing it helped Donald Trump I would opt for that option because that means that we would save lives, less people would die and be sick and suffer. Not everyone is as politically calculated as you might want to think. But I mean to spread all of this it's either irresponsible or wishful thinking that this isn't as serious but I mean it is serious you do need to take it seriously and again we are still learning more about this virus. So I mean I'll leave that there it's really disgusting that the people who are running Herman Cain's account are still downplaying the severity of COVID-19 after it killed the person whose account they run like how disgusting of a person do you have to be to still do something like this after it took his life. I bet if he were here to talk about this he'd say it's pretty damn serious it's not just the media phenomenon it's not just sensationalism sure you can say that some elements of it maybe are sensationalistic but that's not really my main critique my main critique with regard to COVID-19 is how Donald Trump and our American political system have failed us handled this virus like a failed state not given any economic relief to American citizens tried to reopen as quickly as possible and pretend like it's not a thing because that's better for the economy that's my critique my critique in this instance isn't necessarily from the media like they kind of get a pass because they haven't been part of the problem right wing media has been part of the problem fox news has been part of the problem when you have people like Tucker Carlson promote quacks who cite skewed data trying to prove that COVID-19 isn't that serious like he did this in the beginning like can we just stop this COVID-19 like it or not isn't a partisan issue viruses don't have political preferences so let's treat it like the threat to us that it is and try to learn more about it and not spread you know misinformation whether that's for political reasons or just due to wishful thinking like let's stop let's be more responsible when we're talking about COVID-19 especially if we're not experts