The headline:
India has 3rd highest COVID-19 death toll in world
Scary! OMG! That’s awful!
News media wants you to react, and leave it at that, be scared, feel things. Don’t stop and think, just feel. And then…share and promote the story so that they make more money.
Be subversive. Use your brain.
Realize that India has a huge population, so they’ll be at the top of any chart of any global topic if you’re just looking at numbers. Realize that US, Brazil, and China will also be at the top. Realize that China lies so their numbers don’t matter. Realize you need to compare India, US, and Brazil and the ROW using numbers that are normalized by population. Total numbers don’t make sense.
Go to http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ to find the visualization you want.
Total numbers – YES! The US is second only to the European Union! OMG!!!!
Find that when normalizing by population, Brazil is in the middle of the pack, the US is on the low end of the main group, and India is way off at the bottom.
So…the only thing to really take away is that India’s reporting systems are likely very different, so comparisons kind of don’t even make sense at this point.
And THAT is how to read headlines.