Our perception of the world is often taken for granted. There are many theories of perception and often they can appear contradictory. Likely, the various theories are focusing on different aspects of a very complex process. For example, in the fairy tale Little Red Cap (Grimm and Grimm 1909) Little Red’s perceptual set fails her when the wolf successfully masquerades as Red’s grandmother. Little Red’s past experience, emotion and context did not help her make sense of new stimuli which lead to her untimely demise. The purpose of this paper is to tease your perception process, not with fairy tales but by presenting U.S. Mortality counts and context statistics for various years including details for the most recent death season 2019-20.  The examination herein provides a timely example of how models of perception conflict with the rich rationality and behavioral literature.

Keywords: : U.S. Crude Death Rates, COVID-19, Context in Perception