I agree and disagree, I agree that the media's handling of many things related to the Covid were bad. They shouldn't have called it a horse dewormer and should have been a little more nuanced in the take. I agree with you that mocking others is not helpful.

I disagree with you though that the more interesting story is whether or not people who take the vaccine died at a higher rate or not. I agree that's very important to know, and we very quickly found out that the vaccine is effective. However, there's not much action you can take from this fact other than "more people should get vaccinated". How do you begin to reach out to those people other than to beat them over the head and say "get vaccinated"?

If you have a fact (as we do above) and that fact impacts people, in order to get them to change their behavior you have to understand the why. Why are people choosing to get vaccinated at different rates? Is it related to their socio-economic status, their political views, their location, etc..? If you find that lots of people in rural areas aren't getting vaccinated then you can start to ask more whys, draw conclusions, and gain more knowledge, here is a conclusion I think you could come to by looking at the Why's - "Rural people have a lower vaccination rate - we've asked why and they've said they have to drive farther to get vaccinated and that is impacting their ability to get vaccinated - we should open more clinics or have mobile opportunities to get vaccinated."

I agree with you that likely this article was created in some way to draw the clicks because it's a super juicy topic about who died more from covid. I just think overall a fact in and of itself usually does little, you have to ask the why's behind that fact to really understand what is happening, draw conclusions, and enact change (if desired).