Commentators around the globe, including physicians, quote the 2-in-1000 global mortality rate due to covid. It is a matter of CDC record.
Not disputing that at all, just the way you showed the data.
That is a valid perspective, not a distortion of the truth.
Agreed, but its also not a useful way of showing the data.
A selective comparison of just five years will show differences of thousands [your graph] but that is irrelevant in the big picture.
If you want to post selectively, post the worst five.
If you want to compare the malaise of 2020/2021 with previous decades, compare against all years.
You can't just cherry pick the worst years, that doesn't provide a true representation. Your argument that its wrong of me to use the last few years though is incorrect, as I shall illustrate below with a series of hand drawn artistic masterpieces...
Looking at all the years doesn't account for myriad of confounding factors, such as socioeconomic change, healthcare advancements etc etc, but looking at the more recent years removes long term trends. If you put your graph up with a scale that was appropriate, then it would be orders of magnitude more useful, looking at 1, 5 or 100 years.
One other thing: when you drew your selective-years graph, you boasted it was drawn with "no fiddling". The graph I drew is the true representation of the same data. I do hope you are not trying to suggest otherwise.
Not at all, that's exactly my point, you can display data in different ways, without changing its raw values. My point is that the way you displayed it using a scale that flattened out the year on year changes, hides much of the true information, not in any way that you were altering it.
Now, regarding your suggestion of cherry picking the worst 5 years...
Imagine you (or I, nothing personal) went to the doctor - 'doc, I've started crapping myself most nights when I'm asleep'. If he then drew the number of times you'd crapped yourself per year on a graph, he could look at all years, the last 5 years, or the worst 5 years.
Graph 1 makes it look like there is no problem (because its no more than the worst 5 years, and less than some), but 2 & 3 show there is a problem... and I've view crapping myself, however infrequently, as an adult, as a problem

.
Similarly, let look at the effect of scale. Graph 1 shows person 1 and person 2s gross salary, on a suitable scale. Graph 2 shows their salary using the UKs GDP for scale. Hard to see the difference isn't it...
Anyway, I've said my bit and respectfully will not be replying any further,
Best,
HT