Have Plagues Repeated Exactly Every 100 Years?







The predictive value of cherry-picked data is generally low to insignificant.







































							Mixture
['A meme documents that plagues occur every 100 years.', 'Pandemics of some type were extant during all four of the years referenced in the meme.', "However, the meme cherry-picks a small amount of data and isn't particularly useful in any predictive sense.", 'A common phenomenon that occurs during crises (e.g., natural disasters, political upheaval, terrorist attacks) is attempts by people to assert a sense of certainty and control over events by finding patterns in them, thereby suggesting that whatever is occurring — however chaotic or frightening it may be — is nonetheless natural, predictable, or manageable. So it was with the following meme, which was circulated during the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic in April 2020:', '', 'Although this meme couldn’t fairly be classified as “false” (since pandemics of some type were indeed extant during all four of the years it references), it isn’t particularly useful in any informative or predictive sense.', 'It’s an example of the common technique of creating the impression of a regular pattern by cherry-picking a small amount of (not necessarily relevant) data, while completely ignoring a much larger body of related data that doesn’t fit the desired pattern. Specifically:', 'Nonetheless, for those who want to know how “true” the meme is, we offer the following summary of what its entries refer to:', 'Rumors about antifa plotting violence have coincided with the month of July and Gettysburg before.', 'A complete story is rarely told in a headline.', 'Social media rumors that two memorials in New York were vandalized proved misleading.', 'In August 2019, a 23-year-old unarmed Black man died after an encounter with police officers in Aurora, Colorado.', 'A chaotic scene in St. Louis sparked outrage, memes, and confusion.', 'Socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested on sex abuse charges connected to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.', 'The white supremacist group made frequent use of the slogan more recently embraced by President Donald Trump, though they did not, as some claim, invent it.', "The question of past arrests often surfaces among people who want to rationalize police officers' actions when Black men are killed in custody.", 'You can claim anything if you remove the barrier of evidence.', 'Rumors about antifa plotting violence have coincided with the month of July and Gettysburg before.', '© 1995 - 2020 by Snopes Media Group Inc.', 'This material may not be reproduced without permission.', 'Snopes and the Snopes.com logo are registered service marks of Snopes.com']
Have Plagues Repeated Exactly Every 100 Years?