The Blaze’s Stu Burguiere took a hammer to CNN over this segment on Texas and increased mobility after the state starting easing its lockdown, highlighting how this scary-looking chart is total BS:
This CNN segment about Texas was agonizing. It's been well covered that the testing increase is the likely cause of increased caseload. But, this graph on mobility. Ugh. pic.twitter.com/EVoG9mIW7R
— Stu Burguiere (@StuDoesAmerica) May 19, 2020
You see, the “idea was to show that TX let everyone rush out of their houses, and that’s the cause in the rise in cases”:
The idea was to show that TX let everyone rush out of their houses, and that's the cause in the rise in cases. This graph breaks it out by category, which has visits to toy stores look like its skyrocketing, with other categories below but still increasing. pic.twitter.com/biDtdfHNhm
— Stu Burguiere (@StuDoesAmerica) May 19, 2020
But, SURPRISE! Here’s what the data actually shows when “zoomed out”:
But, here's the summarized data of general merchandise stores from the same source. Zoomed out, the rise is not exactly impressive. So…. pic.twitter.com/1FThlY6NCV
— Stu Burguiere (@StuDoesAmerica) May 19, 2020
Not only that, it’s flattening “after their chart ended”:
So, you only get roughly this chunk on the big screen. Taken in context, you can see the rise is not all that dramatic, began long before the lockdown ended, and seems to flatten out after their chart ended. pic.twitter.com/05IXBUSZ8h
— Stu Burguiere (@StuDoesAmerica) May 19, 2020
Still not a “decent picture of craziness” if you ask us:
But, if you only show this part of the chart, you can paint a decent picture of craziness, especially if you break out the toy store data, which has a steeper increase. pic.twitter.com/r3ZkDe9km0
— Stu Burguiere (@StuDoesAmerica) May 19, 2020
Oh, and the worst part? The increase of “traffic to bars” is because people are going to bars to get them open, not because they are open:
I won't even go into the part where he was "told" that a 16% increase in traffic to bars – which are all closed – meant people were going to bars to "get them ready" to open. ??????? We didn't even have a date of when bars would open until yesterday.
— Stu Burguiere (@StuDoesAmerica) May 19, 2020
Watch his full report here:
The whole thing was a cluster to try and build a narrative. Anyway, more details on the TX situation herehttps://t.co/jAmCHJhgTJ
— Stu Burguiere (@StuDoesAmerica) May 19, 2020
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