The COVID-19 statistic Trump is hanging his hat on.

[goaded]

Background

I was watching the Fox News interview with Chris Wallace and Donald Trump, when Trump said "I heard we had one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate in the world", and brought out a piece of paper to "prove" it.

No reasonable person could believe the claim, since the US has 433 deaths per million population, but if you watch carefully, at 2:30 into the interview (embedded at the end), you can catch the heading on the piece of paper Trump waves:

"Case fatality rate of COVID-19".

What does it mean?

The best interpretation for the US is simply: the total number of deaths divided by total number of cases.

Needless to say, the USA is not, in fact, best in the world even on that metric.

The US has a very respectable 3.68%, with the range being between 28% (in war- and famine-torn Yemen), and 0% (in mostly small, isolated countries and islands).

Many countries, though, have better "case fatality rates". South Korea's, for example is 2.15%

(I'll work from a snapshot of https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ from today for my figures.)

Why it's a bad statistic

Now, it's an interesting statistic, because it's not a measure of how well the virus is being contained or managed, it's a measure of how well the hospitals have managed to keep people alive so far, and no-one disputes that US hospitals are second to none.

The problem with that is that it doesn't take into account that the main objective when fighting an epidemic is to keep the most people alive.

Currently, about 1% of the population has had the virus, about 4% of them are dead (and half are still ill).

At 60,000 new cases a day (rising daily), a 3.6% case death rate is over 2,000 deaths a day, a few weeks later.

The death rate is already climbing from a low of 517 near the beginning of the month, to 791 today (seven day moving average). That tracks the increase in cases that started three weeks earlier, from a low of 21,000 new cases a day, to around 30,000 two weeks later, also a 50% increase.

Meanwhile, in Europe, new case and death numbers are at about a tenth of their peak values, and looking fairly steady, and the countries that were hit the hardest were hit early on, when we were still feeling our way (similar to NY, NJ, etc.).

No anonymous opinions, you want to say it? Own it.

[zagor]

Trump isn't "hanging his hat" on that. He'll probably say something completely different next time.

[goaded]

Well, he can try, but it's pretty much the only remaining metric where the US doesn't look like its doing really, really badly.

[Sabretooth]

knowing him.

[RolandCuthbert]

It seems like he is hanging his hat on as many Americans dead as possible.

[NewtoTheSouth]

I generally agree with you on that. However, "cases" is a bad statistic too because it's dependent on testing. The more people you test, the more "cases" you will have. If all 330 million Americans were tested today, cases would skyrocket. The USA has conducted 52 million tests. Germany, Italy and Spain have conducted about 6-7 million tests. France has conducted about three million tests. That partly explains why USA cases are so much higher.

USA death rate is still lower than Belgium, UK, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Granted, it is climbing. No one knows what it will be two months from now.

You cam find stats here:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/

[goaded]

I see the argument about finding more cases with more testing, but you have to take into account that the proportion of tests that are coming out positive is also rising, as are the number of deaths.

Germany, Italy and Spain have conducted about 6-7 million tests (each!), yes, but the UK has conducted over 14 million, which is more tests per million than the US, and while Germany has conducted just half as many tests per million, they've found just one fifth the number of cases per capita, a little over 200,000, with less than 10,000 dead.

Also, of course, if you find more cases, or if your number of new cases is rising rapidly, your case fatality rate looks good because you caught mild cases, or people haven't had time to die of it yet.

In fact, I noticed the value has improved, again, to 3.5% from 3.6%, so I had a look at where it was when the number of daily deaths bottomed out, at the beginning of July, and it was 4.33%.
web.archive.org/.../ (You have to look quickly, it automatically updates to the most recent values after a few seconds!)

28th April was 5.62% (and Germany's was 3.87%, since risen to 4.47% because there aren't many new cases).

[mistixs]

The US is certainly close to the top (#10) when it comes to the Worldometer list of 213 countries, but I find it ironic that some people in the UK keep shitting on the US when they have an even higher death rate.
Yes, the US has more total deaths because there are more people in the US, but adjusting for population, the UK has a higher death rate (680 per 1mil) than the US (480 per 1mil) according to the Worldometer stats.
Trump is wrong and so are the people saying that the US has handled the COVID pandemic the worst.

[JimboGB]

I completely agree. It is sad things are that political these days. People can't even come together during a pandemic.

[goaded]

The claim is not that the US is doing the worst, it's that they're not doing the best in the world, as half of them, from the president on down, insist on saying.

I'm disappointed by the UK's initial response, but the UK did better than 6 individual states and DC, and like those places, but not the US as a whole, it has it pretty much under control.

Europe as a whole might be a better comparison.

[mistixs]

I know that your claim isn't that the US is doing the worst. I was just taking the opportunity to vent because a LOT of people have painted it that way.

[goaded]

There's good reason to be angry at the US's response; it's a country with huge resources, and some of the best hospitals in the world, but they never really got the epidemic under control, nationwide. And they keep pretending they're the best in the world.

[MarkRet]

Trump just pulls numbers and ‘facts’ out of his ass. What he’ll hang his hat on is blaming everything on somebody else, that’s his standard operation. Obama, China, ‘ultra-left Democrats’ or most likely ALL of them will get smeared with Trump’s shit. Trump would never hold himself responsible for anything, because he has so much ‘cognitive awareness’.

[007kingifrit]

soooo this graph says trump is about right https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-14..&country=OWID_WRL~USA~ITA~BRA~ESP~SWE~DEU~IND~IRN&cfrMetric=true&totalFreq=true&aligned=true&hideControls=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc of course it will be even better once india actually counts its dead. many poor countries "benefit" from their poverty in that they can't count the real numbers but as my source shows trump is correct

[007kingifrit]

and yea it is a good statistic, it shows how well the hospitals are doing, which is the only REAL measure of how a pandemic is going. you can't stop the virus. you will only kill your economy trying

[goaded]

LMFAO. That's exactly why the metric is so bogus. It goes down as the number of cases goes up! 452 deaths per million, today, up from 448 two days ago, and heading for the 462 that has been pretty much constant for France for weeks, now. That's the meaningful metric. Will you still say France handled it badly in five or six days, when you overtake them?

[007kingifrit]

it is a good measure BECAUSE it goes down as the cases goes up ONLY IF people are not dying

[goaded]

You're confusing "not dead" with "not going to die".

You don't die the day you catch it, it takes time. The US has had nearly a million new cases in the last two weeks, so even with the 3.43% case fatality rate (it's gone down again), that's at least 34,000 more people who are probably going to die. Only, when the curve flattens (which it will, if only because the virus runs out of people to infect), that case fatality rate number is going to go up again.

US deaths per million: 453. (Going by https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/, for consistency; https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/ shows the US having already overtaken France.)

You beat an epidemic by starving it of victims. Ask New York, if you don't want to listen to the rest of the world; they all understand.

[007kingifrit]

that's all untrue because 99.7% of people who get the virus show no symptoms at all

the death rates are not rising with the case totals

[goaded]

99.7% is just a made-up number, and obviously completely wrong. 0.3% of the US population is less than a million. 0.3% of the population of New York state, where 32,689 people have died of covid-19 and they still have more than 125,000 active cases, is just 60,000 people,

The death rates are absolutely rising with the case totals.

July 5th, the daily death rate (averaged over 7 days) was 516, today, it's nearly 1,000, so it's doubled in 3 weeks, just as the numbers of new cases did between Jun 9th and Jun 30th, so there's a 3-4 week lag. In the four weeks since Jun 30th, there have been another 1.6 million new cases (twice the number of new cases as between Jun 9th and Jun 30th).

[darkcloud1945]

If you take Europe [the countries Germany Italy England etc combine the total population would equal within a few thousand the population of the U. S. A. Now add all their covid19 cases and would equal ours. So their covid19 rate and ours are within a few point not the on an individual nation ie Germany vs U. S. A. Italy England.

[goaded]

That's not accurate, but I don't have time to look it up at the moment. Europe, including Russia, has 200,000 deaths, but a population twice the USA's.

[darkcloud1945]

Russia was not used or included in the figures. Russia and China are not the best at reporting true numbers The truth and what they say are two different things.. I was trying to say the countries mentioned would add up to about the same amount of people as live here so you have about the same amount of Covid 19 within a reasonable amount of difference. People use Germany as having 600 plus cases and U. S. A. has 150,000 Apples and Oranges. Russia and China have quite a bit more land mass than the U. S. so more space between people less contact except in the large cities. . As we all know that the virus skips over the riots, tens of thousands of people masks no masks , but we can not go to church , school sports events because you will get Covid19.

[goaded]

Look, I agree with you that comparing the US with EU member states is misleading, it's better to compare individual states or the whole US to the whole EU. Anyway, I found the site that lists the EU and Europe as entities, and the current state is:

The US overtook the EU in number of deaths per million, when it was ~275, around May 20th, it's now 478 to 307. It's really not within a few points.

Deaths per million, per day, right now:
US 3.26
UK 0.85
Europe 0.48
EU 0.23
France 0.15
Italy 0.12
Germany 0.07

ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer

[darkcloud1945]

point taken

[John_Doesnt]

No reasonable person would still support trump, so of course all his supporters believe his claim about Covid.

[AllThatSweetJazz]

That's all well and good, except for why is a "bad statistic".
Relative mortality is the most relevant value, why would it be bad?

Also, fuq your no an0n sh1t.

[goaded]

No, number of people kept safe from the virus is a much more important metric.

Would you prefer to live in a country where 10,000 people got the disease and 1,000 died from it, or where 100,000 people got it and 5,000 people died from it?

[goaded]

Of course, you live in a country doing better in every way. Australia has a much better case fatality rate (1.00%) than the US, but also an awesome 133 total deaths so far, 5.3 deaths per million people.

[AllThatSweetJazz]

I'd choose the 100,000 pop country. Seems obvious.

[goaded]

I wasn't clear. Two countries with the same population. Contain the disease and 1,000 die, or be better at treating it, and 5,000 die?

[AllThatSweetJazz]

Ah, so you mean the comparison is with a scenario where with 10x the infection rate but half the morality rate (because of treatment). Honestly, it depends on why there's fewer infections. If the choice is between a country with better treatment and country that avoids infection by oppressing people then I start leaning toward the latter scenario. Then there's also timescale in relation to vaccine. I can't assume that a vaccine is going to arrive save the day, so in the long term the latter case is also more desirable.

[goaded]

Those really aren't the only two options.

How about a country that avoids infection by supporting people to stay at home from non-essential jobs, wear masks when they're in contact with other people and limit the number of people in a shop at a time?

Like, say, Germany, which has had less than 2,500 cases per million people, and 110 deaths per million, compared to the US, with over five times as many cases per million, and 445 deaths per million?

[AllThatSweetJazz]

You have to stipulate that that’s why the infections are low if I’m to choose between those things then.

In the long run, still, the latter case is likely more desirable. I’d rather have a breed chance of surviving regardless of when I catch the thing, and I would assume that since the other case has more lockdown, this case would have the benefit of less lockdown and less impact economy.

[AllThatSweetJazz]

Not breed. Better*

[Sabretooth]

on the idiocy and the insanity of his base... just like everything else.

[Liam_Hayden]

He's probably waiting for Biden to be the official nominee to unload on him.

[goaded]

I don't recall mentioning Biden, or either political party, for that matter.

[ChefPapiChulo]

seems like no one cares what u think

[goaded]

If I'd wanted a shitstorm, I'd have allowed anonymous opinions.

[beefy40]

Everyone of those deaths is China fault

[Shengning]

What? Why? Did China made this virus and spread it to US? Then why the hell they too have death rate?

[beefy40]

@Shengning While the virus was spreading around China, they suppressed information about it, until it became to big to hide. They also wilfully allowed travel while fully knowing how infection and deadly the virus was. While in lock down, they still allowed travel to other countries including the US. They got mad at the US when we refused air travel from China to the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUbrE1v4kuQ

[Shengning]

But to tell you the truth, you are half right and half wrong. First the government information suppressing is true. People are mad at them, but after that we all united to fight this virus. What's done is done, the next thing is who do we deal with the future. Second one you said is not accurate, you know we'd rather stay at home and keep safe, it's there's still some idiots ignored the situation and we hate them af too. I think they allowed them travel is happened before they knew the virus. None of us wanted this happen intentionally.
I deeply hope this pandemic was just in China. It had effected a lot to Chinese foreign trade you know. I hope American people gets back to normal the sooner the better!