Thread by @jayfug

So KELO decided to bite on Gov. Noem's staff's objection to a USA Today story about the COVID situation in South Dakota. Their call. In my view, it wasn't worth the time. I'll tell you why in just a few tweets (because that's about all that objection is worth)

https://twitter.com/keloland/status/1328725849676410881

1. Noem adviser Maggie Seidel, who wrote the "more nonsense" email blast to media about the Joel Shannon article (linked below) isn't even playing with the same set of facts.
usatoday.com/story/news/hea…

2. Shannon uses mortality rate data (via NYT) from the past week, because the point is to show how things are right now (bad by any measure). Seidel says he's wrong by ... citing mortality data from the beginning of the pandemic, stripping it of any useful recent context.

3. His numbers are accurate. So are hers. His illustrate where things are at recently. Her's don't. I'll leave it to you to decide which is more helpful to readers.

4. Then Seidel reels off states that are also doing bad in terms of COVID, but have restrictions of various kinds, to point out that they don't work. That's just an opinion -- and one not grounded in any sort of scientific method or logic (correlation/causation anyone?)

5. One could just as easily say "well without mask mandates, it would be even worse!" And that may be true too. But it follows the same bad logic. A mask mandate isn't an on/off switch for the virus (it's more complex than that, obvi) But public health experts say they do help.

5. So Seidel didn't ID any actual errors in the USAT piece, just calls it "grossly irresponsible and totally dishonest." Fine - that's her opinion. But I don't know why her opinion is particularly newsworthy, which is why this is the last I'll mention it.
(end thread)