[yomly]

You're completely right - but I guess my point is that anything that has a number attached to it is often treated as fact in the media.

In the very strictest sense of verifiable fact - boolean true/false statements with irrefutable proof, then yes I think fact trumps all.

Unfortunately I think that in reality, very little of what we think of as fact falls under that very narrow definition. And my example was merely trying to illustrate that the entire field of medical statistics and epidemiology is filled with pitfalls, given that many of the numbers that are reported themselves have a tonne of nuance and context baked into them.

And I suppose any discussion which focuses solely on the numbers associated with the current pandemic are going to be extremely lossy as the numbers are a very low fidelity expression of the "truth" (in the idealistic sense).

What does this have to do with facts? I guess I feel that culturally we attribute the trust to things we consider "facts" at quite a superficial level without digging deeper.