But the big elephant number in the room is, why does the United States have one out of every four cases in the world??? If everyone else in the world was full of s*** then they would have more cases than us correct.
You are correct, best guess 10X the numbers of confirmed cases gets ya in the ballpark.. However..
(To be clear, not picking on you. You just happen to share viewpoints that don't agree with mine, and I think reasonable discussion on these issues is beneficial for both of us.)
First, 10x isn't the best guess / best case, it's the worst case. Every study I've seen done on how much of the population has antibodies has shown it to be 15x-60x greater than the number of positive tests. When the denominator of that death rate equation goes up by 15x-60x, the death rate goes down by 15x-60x. Which means that the death rate isn't 3%, it's 0.05% - 0.2%. The CDC itself said that they estimate the incident death rate to be around 0.25%. While I definitely don't think a low death rate should be ignored, I do think the general population needs to understand (or be told) that a 0.25% death rate is extremely low, and that there are MANY things that are more likely to kill them (like obesity, smoking, or alcohol, all
voluntary choices).
Second, the US does NOT have one of every four
cases in the world. The US has one of every
four positive tests in the world. Important distinction. When you consider that the US has performed roughly 1/3 of the total tests in the world (not counting China's BS numbers), having 1 out of 4 of the positive results doesn't sound quite so bad. Plus, give it some time; go look at India's data. They've performed 1/10 as many tests per capita, yet have 1/2 as many cases. And even with very little testing (relatively speaking) they're still rising exponentially, as opposed to the US that never actually grew exponentially and is pretty much flattening out. The media's gonna be really upset when India comes sailing past in a few weeks and they can no longer say that the US has the most cases (and with enough time, unfortunately deaths as well) in the world.
I've gotten really frustrated with people characterizing the US, or certain parts of the US, as these bass-ackwards conservatives that are incompetent at dealing with the Coronavirus. I've heard so much lately about how other countries are getting back to normal, going back to school, bars and clubs opening back up, while the US isn't doing those things because we're so incompetent at following rules or because we're "clinging to our outdated freedom".
Two replies to that: 1, it's not over till the fat lady sings. And based on case counts in recent days in most of Europe (and Latin America), the fat lady most definitely has not sung. Number 2, even though we're still dealing with it in the US, our
death rate per capita is less than, or very similar to, most European countries. That's what matters, right? Adjusting for population, how many people have died? And in that regard, the US is not any sort of outlier. You could say that we have successfully "flattened the curve", right? We spread out the cases and deaths over a longer period of time so as to not overwhelm our medical system. That was the goal, and we've done exactly that, right? So why are people complaining about the job the US has done with Coronavirus?
Likewise for comparing regions within the US. I'm in NC, where a few of our universities just shut down in-person class after trying it for about a week. I was listening to some knuckleheads on public radio this morning lamenting about how NC should have / should be responding to all this more like New York, because New Yorkers have flattened the curve, eliminated the virus, and gotten back closer to normal life with schools opening back up, etc.
New York? NEW YORK!?!? The same New York that has had EIGHT TIMES as many people per capita die than NC?!? Why on earth should our response look more like theirs? Sure, our cases have drug on for a longer period of time, BUT THAT WAS THE POINT. And we've had far fewer people die from it as a result.
Likewise for Florida, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and virtually every state with a Republican governor. If you listened to the news, you'd think that the sky is falling in those states because they still have Coronavirus, yet their death rates per capita are only a fraction of the Northeastern (Democrat led) states that the media holds as ideal examples of how to deal with the virus. Much of what we're being told about the virus is completely backwards that what the actual data says, and most of the rest of what we're told conveniently leaves out extremely important context. Like, for example, that 71% of the deaths here in NC are in nursing homes / assisted living facilities, and that the average age of COVID death is roughly equal to, well, the average age of everything-else death. Think about that one for a minute!
Look, I'm not at all a conspiracy theorist on this stuff. Both of my parents tested positive from it just this past week, and I had a great-aunt / cousin that passed away about a week ago from it. It's definitely real, it's definitely killing people, and we definitely need to address it. But so far, our response to it has not been based on the
actual facts and data regarding its severity and how / who we should be protecting; likewise, the media reports on the successes and failures is not based on the
actual results that the data portrays. And you're a fool if you don't realize that there's only one reason why that's so: to defeat Donald J. Trump in the November 2020 election. Period.
