"Greatest Presidential Felony" in History

[_Gunnar]

4% of the world's population yet 1/4 of the coronavirus cases and deaths is still an incontrovertible fact. Worse than any other nation. Also incontrovertible is that Trump irresponsibly tried to downplay the seriousness of the virus, even trying to pass it off as a Democrat or Chinese hoax, causing most of the country to not take it seriously, which contributed significantly to the rapidity of the spread. Trump's dismantling of the pandemic response team wisely set up by President Obama, and liquidating and failing to refresh much of the equipment and supplies Obama left in reserve was, at least, irresponsible of Trump, if not downright criminal, especially considering that he almost certainly did it just to spite Obama. And you can't credibly deny he did that, when he is on record as having boasted of doing just that, at the time. Granted, Trump was not the only one who made mistakes in the whole pandemic response, but things could have been a lot better than they were, had he set a more responsible leadership tone and example.

How do we know we could have done much better? Easy, because almost every other nation on earth has done much better.

[_subgenius]

...
Easy, because almost every other nation on earth has done much better.

Cool story bruh, repeat it enough it may become true - Jenn Kamp, its still only true in your fantasy.
While we wait for you to provide real data....

Country. Death rate (%)
Yemen 28.96
Italy 12.34
United Kingdom. 11.22
Mexico 10.58
Belgium 10.53
Ecuador 9.19
France 7.56
Netherlands 7.5
Chad 7.47
Sweden 6.7
...
...
USA. 2.98

[_Gunnar]

Cool story bruh, repeat it enough it may become true - Jenn Kamp, its still only true in your fantasy.
While we wait for you to provide real data....

Country. Death rate (%)
Yemen 28.96
Italy 12.34
United Kingdom. 11.22
Mexico 10.58
Belgium 10.53
Ecuador 9.19
France 7.56
Netherlands 7.5
Chad 7.47
Sweden 6.7
...
...
USA. 2.98

:redface: You know, you're right! When looked at from the standpoint of the death rate. We could easily have done worse than we did. I apologize for my hyperbole! But it is also true that there are other nations, such as South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam and others who did spectacularly better than we did. It is also true, though, that there are other nations that, though they were initially hit harder proportionally than we were, who have subsequently done a much better job than we did of squelching the spread and are now much farther along on the road to full recovery and normalcy than we are. I still think that we could have and should have done much better than we have so far. Trump did not help matters by both initially and subsequently downplaying the danger, and even going so far as to claim it was all a big hoax.

And it is still true that we did proportionally much worse than the world as a whole. We can't just ignore the fact that we have had 1/4 of all the world's cases and deaths from coronavirus, while having only 4.5% of the world's entire population.

[_MissTish]

.

[_Some Schmo]

if only Trump were shut down, these 165,000 people would still be alive and healthy.

FIFY

You can spin the situation any way you want. I imagine you'll want to in order to avoid thinking about the blood on yours and every other Trump voter's hands.

[_subgenius]

[_Gunnar]

The daily number of new cases and deaths in the U.S. as a whole has changed from falling, to rising. The same is true of Texas, and Florida has changed from falling to flat, with the number of new cases beginning to rise. Both Florida and Texas yesterday had more new cases than California, with Texas new cases nearly 2.5 times those of California. I think it likely that both Texas and Florida, especially Texas, will surpass California in total number of cases before the end of the year, perhaps even before the election. Texas has already passed California in number of fatalities, and both those states already greatly surpass California in number of cases and deaths per capita, and have done so since nearly the start of the pandemic.

In California, in the meantime, the daily new cases is trending sharply downward, the numbers of covid-19 patients hospitalized and in ICUs even more so, and the positivity rate has declined to 3.3. I fervently hope that those numbers for California continue in the same direction, and, for the sake of Texans and Floridians, that their corresponding numbers turn around towards the downward direction.

[_Res Ipsa]

Cool story bruh, repeat it enough it may become true - Jenn Kamp, its still only true in your fantasy.
While we wait for you to provide real data....

Country. Death rate (%)
Yemen 28.96
Italy 12.34
United Kingdom. 11.22
Mexico 10.58
Belgium 10.53
Ecuador 9.19
France 7.56
Netherlands 7.5
Chad 7.47
Sweden 6.7
...
...
USA. 2.98

:redface: You know, you're right! When looked at from the standpoint of the death rate. We could easily have done worse than we did. I apologize for my hyperbole! But it is also true that there are other nations, such as South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam and others who did spectacularly better than we did. It is also true, though, that there are other nations that, though they were initially hit harder proportionally than we were, who have subsequently done a much better job than we did of squelching the spread and are now much farther along on the road to full recovery and normalcy than we are. I still think that we could have and should have done much better than we have so far. Trump did not help matters by both initially and subsequently downplaying the danger, and even going so far as to claim it was all a big hoax.

And it is still true that we did proportionally much worse than the world as a whole. We can't just ignore the fact that we have had 1/4 of all the world's cases and deaths from coronavirus, while having only 4.5% of the world's entire population.

Gunnar, you don't have to be that embarrassed. Although Sub labels his numbers "death rate," that's not what they are. Death rate, more commonly called "mortality rate" is deaths per capita. That figure is one measure of the "burden" of disease.

Sub's numbers represent one method of estimating a different number: the Case Fatality Rate (or Ratio). It is calculated by dividing the total number of deaths during time t by the number of cases over time t. Infectious disease experts have warned over and over again that we cannot reliably estimate CFR during the course of an epidemic. The reason is obvious: the people who get sick during time t are not necessarily the same people who die during time t. In other words, the comparison is not apples to apples. In addition, the ratio depends heavily on how accurate the number of cases is, which with COVID-19 depends on the extent of testing. For example, early in the Pandemic, South Korea tested like gangbusters. As a result, there early CFR, estimated the way Sub's numbers use, went to tenths of a percent. Why? Because they had identified a buttload of cases that hadn't had time to die yet. The period between infection and death is generally weeks with COVID 19. Over time, South Korea's CFR using this method to estimate has gradually crept up to be in line with others.

Here's another way to look at it: Sub's method of estimating CFR assumes that nobody infected with COVID-19 today will die.

Here's the other way of estimate CFR during an epidemic: Divide the number of deaths by the total people who have died or recovered. This method answers the question: of those people who have had an outcome, what percentage of them died? This method assumes that the people who are infected with COVID-19 today will die at the same rate that we have experienced so far. It is also heavily influenced by testing. If only the seriously ill are tested, the rate will be high. If the mildly ill or truly asymptomatic populations are tested at a high rate, the number will be lower.

In addition, counts reported in real time can have all kinds of problems, from inconsistent methodologies to simply missing cases or deaths. When the pandemic is over, the experts will look at all the data and provide a final estimate of disease "burden." Here is the final report on H1N1 in the US. https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52 ... S75/499147 CFR can be calculated from that, and both methods of calculation will give the same number. And, based on past experience, the final estimate of CFR can be wildly different from estimates in the course of the pandemic.

So, assuming that no one in the US who is infected with COVID-19 will die, CFR is 4.6% What happens if we estimate it assuming that currently infected people will die at the same rate infected people in the US have died to date? I'm going to use Worldometers "yesterday" numbers (because I'm lazy and know where to find them). https://www.worldometers.information/coronavir ... Sauthorbio? US deaths: 201,348. US recovered: 4,119, 158. US deaths+recovered: 4,320,506. Estimated CFR: 201,348/4,320,506 X100 = 4.6% How does that stack up? No idea. It's not worth spending the time because of question we haven't asked yet: Is CFR the best metric for judging how well a country has handled the virus? Nope. Why not? Because it tells us nothing about how effective we've been at keeping people from getting sick.

For example, take two countries, both with a population of 1 million people. In Country A, 1000 people were infected and 10 died. In Country B, 500,000 people were infected and 5000 died. Which country handled the epidemic better? The CFR won't tell you -- it is 1% for both countries. A much stronger case could be made for mortality rate as a measure because it incorporates both how successfully a country kept people from becoming infected and how successfully it kept sick people from dying. I can find that quite easily on Worldometers just go to the "yesterday" numbers and sort by deaths per million of population. We're the 11th worst country in world, with a mortality rate five times higher than the world average.

Is that the best measure of how we've handled COVID-19? Arguable not, because it doesn't account for available resources. All things being equal, we would expect poorer countries to have worse outcomes than rich countries. Roughly speaking, the GDP per capita in the US is six times higher than the world average. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY ... _desc=true Yet, our mortality rate from COVID is five times higher than the world average. If by worst handling one means the gap between what should have been and what happened, I don't think there's much hyperbole in your claim.

ETA: Here's a look at how badly we've handled testing: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07 ... o-thin-air

In April, we had a plan to distribute 5 reusable masks to every household to help protect essential workers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/ ... _manual_10 Instead, we sent billions of dollars to companies that the government refuses to identify.

[_MeDotOrg]

I made a chart comparing Covid-19 deaths per month compared to the major wars in American history:

god of war wallpaper

[_subgenius]

I made a chart comparing Covid-19 deaths per month compared to the major wars in American history:

god of war wallpaper

Again, the covid definition for "fatality" is nowhere near the definition when used for war.
But your hyperbole is consistent.