My eighth Critical Thinking about COVID video explores how anchoring is used to downplay COVID deaths. Anchoring is people’s tendency to rely on the first piece of information they learn, and make judgements in relation to it. The government uses an extreme form of anchoring, claiming they’ve saved 2.2 million lives. The 2.2 million figure comes from Imperial College in London, who estimated that if nothing was done in response to the pandemic – no government action, no staying at home, no changes in behavior – then 2.2 million Americans would die. In this hypothetical scenario, the whole population carried on normally, with no social distancing, hand-washing or mask-wearing, even as millions were dying. Obviously this is an implausible worst-case scenario – but it’s used as an anchor to downplay 130,000 deaths.
This video features a cartoon I originally drew back on April 27th, illustrating how Trump used anchoring to downplay 50,000 COVID deaths. However, the cartoon hasn’t aged well as the actual number of deaths now – over 138,000 deaths – is approaching the top of the exaggerated sharpie line in the cartoon.
To prevent the cartoon from dating so quickly, this time I extended the sharpie line to reach all the way to 2.2 million! Of course, this meant a *lot* of scrolling in the video above.
I also drew a new cartoon analogy, comparing the 2.2 million anchoring to a fireman barely trying to stop an inferno. Every time the Trump administration argues they’ve saved millions of lives, they’re actually arguing “hey, we’re better than nothing!”
Check out the full list of Critical Thinking About COVID videos on YouTube. Thanks to Prof. Melanie Trecek-King, Dr. Lori Byron, Dr. Robert Byron, and Dr. Elizabeth Del Buono for their feedback in the writing of this video.
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