owl wrote: ↑Wed May 06, 2020 11:41 am
Well... we're #7 in the world (out of nearly 200 countries total) for deaths per capita according to
Johns Hopkins, so I don't know if that is really "one of the lowest", especially considering our number of COVID deaths is probably
heavily underreported due to our lack of testing.
I'm sure some states and governors are doing well with their response and some aren't.
re: Deaths per Capita - Yeah, so I was wrong to say in the world. But it's interesting to note that those 6 countries that are ahead of us (most by a lot) in deaths are in western Europe where reporting is quite likely more accurate than some of the other countries like, oh, say China. etc., Still you're point is taken. I should have made my point better.
re: Under Reporting. I find it odd that the NYTimes (and some other outlets) started reporting this in the past week or so. Previously, I had only seen information showing in inflation of death statistics. While their speculation may be correct, I see two problems.
1) The manner in which we count COVID-19 deaths doesn't really matter if it's different than how other countries count. For instance, we are much worse than China according to the data I found. But is there any doubt that China is massively under reporting COVID-19 deaths?
2) According to interviews with several doctors, the CDC has changed how they are assigning cause of death. It's no longer necessary to have a confirmed test result. For instance, From the BBC: "New York City's death count has spiked to more than 10,000 after it reported 3,778 people who likely had Covid-19, but died without being tested."
And another example, On April 23rd a man died from a drug overdose while infected with COVID-19 in Venture County, California and was counted as a COVID-19 death. In the past this would be counted as an overdose death. That's no longer the case. So we can't even accurately compare the COVID-19 virus to previous (or even future) instances because we are changing how we are reporting the deaths.
To be clear, I'm not trying to make the argument that the U.S. has no problem and we should all open up immediately or anything of the sort. I AM saying that the statistics are murky at best, but even at their worse, we aren't nearly as bad off as some sources are making out.