Another example of effective new media design, by those nasty #fakenews America-hating journalists at the New York Times.
Because I’m so insecure that I can’t bear to encounter facts and professional analysis that threaten my cherished personal beliefs, I won’t click through and see for myself how scrolling through the story makes this complicated information graspable at my own pace.
Because I proudly treat my ignorance like a delicate flower, and choose to blame “the media” for the nation’s problems (shooting the messenger is always a winning strategy), I won’t read a story that explains that major cities are on the other side of the curve, but that the progress is masked on the national level because new outbreaks are happening in other regions.
So the curve looks flat, only because new outbreaks are happening even as the hardest-hit regions start to emerge on the other side of the curve.