The Pew Foundation, which describes itself as reporting “nonpartisan, non-advocacy data and analysis on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world,” severely damaged its credibility with its analysis of a study comparing the average of deaths in Democratic-controlled congressional districts and Republican-controlled districts.

“COVID-19 deaths have declined in Democratic congressional districts since mid-April, but remained relatively steady in districts controlled by Republicans,” the Pew polling unit tweeted.

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But the chart included with the tweet shows a much higher rate of death in Democrat-controlled districts with 4.1 deaths following its peak of 7.4 deaths versus the GOP-controlled districts with 1.7 deaths following its peak at 2.0 deaths.

“When ppl ask me what I mean when I say America’s uniquely obsessive partisanship is disrupting important study and analysis, in addition to tapping into the public’s worst instincts, well…” said The Washington Examiner executive editor Seth Mandel.

“THAT is what you guys took from this graph?” said conservative pundit Allie Beth Stuckey to Pew.

Data on the virus has come under fire from all quarters, as early overreaction to purely medical data, without factoring in targeted areas of infection, age, and underlying conditions have given rise to numbers used to justify a plethora of harsh limits on civil liberties and economic regulations that have crippled the U.S. economy and sent scores of millions into unemployment.

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If cooler heads would have prevailed at all levels of government, as they actually did in states like Texas and South Dakota, then common sense precautions would have taken precedence over nanny state edicts. Businesses would also have generally remained open, or reopened quickly after a short initial period, and those with prior health conditions that would make them vulnerable to the virus would have been given extra attention. At the national level, west coast states and New York and New Jersey, where the vast majority of infections and deaths have occurred, would have still been under strict protocols, leaving the rest of the nation to get on with their lives and businesses.

In fact, strip away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) numbers those with underlying conditions, those past 65 years of age, and those not residing in the states most severely hit, and the number of infections and deaths nationwide falls to a fraction of the current total. Not that those with health issues or the elderly should not have been protected. But with a focus on them and not on those unlikely to get or to be greatly affected by the virus, greater resources could have been deployed to aid in their recovery or to protect them from the pandemic in the first place.

Instead, the virus was used as a political scare tactic and thus only the counsel of public health leaders seemed to have guided government on policy. Naturally, and not surprisingly, public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx emphasized the threat the virus posed to health.

The proper counterbalance, a breakdown of the numbers into the subsets above and more of an analysis of the consequences of the economic measures, may have not only saved greater lives but spared the American people the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression.