The King of Personal Perspective

Some of my friends are arguing that COVID deaths are currently undercounted because they are being labeled on death certificates as something else. Cardiac arrest, pneumonia, and other possibilities get listed, possibly because it is easier to believe we aren't living in a zombie apocalypse world [yet] so all that fake reporting on cable news can't be truth.

Some of my friends are arguing that some COVID deaths could be due to other causes. Their quick study of how doctors choose to describe 'cause' on death certificates leads them to suspect all sorts of motives for inflating the truth. Financial motives are the ones receiving scrutiny, possibly because it is easier to believe greed or a desire to avoid bankruptcy will move people to commit fraud than it is to believe that 'cause of death' has always involved medical judgement calls made by fallible, but mostly honest doctors.

I pointed out to a friend in the first group how a friend in the second group thinks. There response was to paraphrase me (correctly!), and then try to refute their position instead of accidentally thinking it was my position. Refreshing!

So their argument is that, instead of lowballing the COVID-19 death counts (because patients die without ever being tested), doctors are intentionally inflating those numbers by counting people who simply died of "routine" heart attacks as if they were COVID deaths? 

And how do those geniuses explain why so many more people in general happen to be dying now than usually do in the same period of time? Just a coincidence that those nefarious doctors are capitalizing on for..what nefarious purpose, exactly?

In writing it out, I got to see how difficult it is for each of my friends to understand how the other is thinking. It is obvious they see the world in different ways. They don't accept each other's evidence. Literally.

How? The King of Personal Perspective takes the throne.

Confirmation Bias ensures we spot supporting evidence and reject as irrelevant (at best) or fraudulent (at worst) evidence to the contrary. In the textbooks they call it 'perceptual framework', but it is really just the structure you've build over a lifetime that helps you make sense of the world. Evidence that doesn't fit is usually rejected without higher thought. There was once a time when we thought all swans were white. No exceptions. No one had ever seen one that wasn't... until they did... and they still chose a name for the bird that implied it wasn't a swan. 


This King is very difficult to depose. If you think you have, you probably haven't and he's chuckling at your naivety. You need serious help from others to stand a chance. You need people who don't see the world your way, but won't burn you at the stake for your beliefs. You need people who do see the world your way, but won't shun you if you pay attention to those who do not. Most importantly, though, you have to admit to yourself that you could be wrong, and prepare yourself to listen to Truth Spoken By Another. Such truths can be heard, but you have to appreciate an old demi-goddess. Her name is Temperance. Shut your mouth and still the perceptual framework's feedback. Even then it is really hard to hear. That framework is armored with defenders at the top ready to cast boiling oil down upon the attackers.