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by praestigiare 441 days ago
Numbers of cases, deaths, and how those numbers are tabulated are factual data. We can argue over the data quality, but at this point we have data from many independent countries' health services. Our view of these facts has gotten better with time, and we now have more certainty than we did in the early days of the pandemic.

Recommendations, regulations, and responses to the pandemic as it happened are factual in the sense that they happened, but are not "facts" in the same way. It is not a fact that standing in a restaurant without a mask was terrorism and sitting was fine. Instead, given the information available at the time, and the practical requirement to have your mask off to eat, this policy was chosen for a time as a risk mitigation balanced with practical requirements. The appropriateness of this policy is a matter of opinion.