> The US has experienced more deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than any other country and has one of the highest cumulative per capita death rates.
Why would you start both the article and the abstract by saying that the US has experienced more death than any other country when the US also has (by far) the largest population of all countries surveyed?
Reporting the per capita figure would be enough to make the point that the US did not handle the pandemic well. This way it just sounds like unwarranted self-flagellation.
> It's worth mentioning both. The United States is, after all, not the most populous country in the world.
The GP was arguing that per-capita deaths should replace total deaths. In context, your argument is "Total deaths are a useful metric and should be included, because the US is not the most populous country." Maybe it's true, but the argument is non-sequitur. As we all know, the real reason total deaths is a useful metric is that pancakes are delicious.
Also, the GP was explicitly arguing that the US is the largest of the 18 surveyed countries, which gives an implicit nod to the US not being the largest country in the world.
yes but it's not like they surveyed every country in the world though. I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available. It just does not seem like a meaningful statistic given the sample they are studying.
> I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available.
You would be incorrect. Perhaps the reason this death rate was mentioned is because the US is an outlier in both absolute numbers as well as per capita deaths.
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but anyways:
Maybe I should have added reliable to data.
I'm highly skeptical of the ~4000 deaths figure reported as the death count for China and I have the sense that the authors of the study were too or they would have included it in their study.
As for India, when you factor in rural areas, I don't think the reporting and data would be as reliable as for the US. [1]
To go back to my original point, I'm not arguing that the US successfully handled COVID. Nor am I trying to demonize China or India. I'm just saying that the author's decision of foregrounding absolute death toll over per capita is poor and misleading given the sample they used. It could be seen as bad faith on the part of the authors when the per capita number can support their argument just as well.
While I share the skepticism in the numbers from China and India, I believe that if they were anywhere near a similar per capita rate as the US there would be visible evidence. China attacked the problem hard and by all accounts seems to have succeeded. For the most part India seems to have just gotten lucky; maybe India's numbers will be adjusted over time to reveal some rural devastation, but I will want to wait for some real evidence before I group them with the cluster of fuck-up states like the US, Brazil, and UK.
China was trucking in loads of urns every day that were more than ten times larger then their reported death rates; doesn't that count as visible evidence?
Citation needed. This is the first I have heard of this and given how desperately the current administration wants to pin anything COVID-related on to China I think that this would have been widely publicized if it were actually true.
China did originate the virus as far as anyone can tell, they were not forthright with evidence, didn’t shut down travel globally and they seemed to push malign influence through the WHO.
It’s not hard to see they have lots of blame and that has nothing to do with the US administration.
The virus originated in China, but China did not 'originate the virus.' Please do not make unfounded speculation regarding the causality in this event.
China has not been completely forthright about the early stages of the covid's spread and they engaged in tactics similar to, but not quite as bad, as what the current US administration and some states have done to try to hide the scope of the disease within their jurisdiction. It seems like a lot of countries have done poorly at communicating with their citizens and with each other regarding covid.
China didn't shut down travel fast enough, but by the time things has started to appear and become concerning covid had already left China and was en route to Italy and the west coast of the US. Once the nature of the disease and particularly the asymptomatic transmission stage became clear everyone needed to adjust. To claim this is some fault of the Chinese government is pure BS.
As for pushing 'malign' interest, you are entitled to your own opinions but that seems to be another unfounded value judgement that is just as easily dismissed as right-wing propaganda.
Insofar as other countries are blamed for failing to “contain” the virus, yes, China did originate it. They had knowledge of it being airborne, etc. and there’s ample evidence that information was scrubbed and suppressed as it typically happens in authoritarian regimes where disasters undermine the charade of omnipotence and excellence.
I did follow the link, and so far there seems to be a small cluster of stories all reprinting each other and the exact same pictures with reference to a single shipment to a single crematorium in late March.
One. Single. Event.
Where are the other shipments in to other cities? Where is the supply chain evidence that this was an across-the-board jump in urn orders and not a single entrepreneur aiming to pre-order big and then have inventory he could resell at a markup if things went bad? Where is the rest of the evidence?
You wanted a citation, I gave it to you, and now you’re shifting the goalposts. If you want more extensive evidence, I would invite you to investigate, and post your findings here.
Lazy rhetoric is ruining HN, and your posts here are part of the problem.
You provided one very weak piece of supporting evidence and expect us to consider that a validation of your otherwise completely unfounded claim regarding China having a high death rate and hiding it? You are projecting when it comes to claims of shifting goalposts and lazy rhetoric.
Let's go back to your original claim, shall we? "China was trucking in loads of urns every day that were more than ten times larger then their reported death rates; doesn't that count as visible evidence?" No, China was not trucking in loads of urns every day. There was one _single_ report of a large shipment and from the picture provided it would have trouble filling a single truck, certainly not 'loads.' Then there is that 'every day' lie. It was one single day. So yes, for a single day in March it was 'every day' and then for each day thereafter it was not. The number of urns delivered was double the reported death rate and not ten times. It would appear that every single clause of your short claim was wrong. I have a hard time seeing how that counts as supporting evidence.
I'm not sure what you're asking here, both are mentioned in the very first sentence -
> The US has experienced more deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than any other country and has one of the highest cumulative per capita death rates.
It seems likely India has the most total cases already. But India has a much younger population so I don't know if that really translates to twice the deaths that they report.
The US is not an outlier in per capita deaths. It is at the higher end of the range, especially among developed countries, though many countries have similar rates (such as most of Latin America).
And this statement captures all the info one needs, in my opinion. But abstracts are partly about selling the importance of the paper, so there's some leeway in how facts are presented.
China is not reporting accurate data, so I have no idea how you could possibly say definitively that China's numbers were less than the US on any basis. [1]
We are saying that China's numbers are less than the US because if they were fucking up at a level even close to what the US is going through the evidence would be clearly visible. You cannot hide millions of dead. You can hide the bodies, but not the holes in the population and social structure that comes from losing this many people. So far your only evidence is a report that their case numbers were higher than reported from six months ago. Have anything more recent?
There's evidence that deliveries of urns to cemeteries was substantially higher than reported death counts [1], as well as gigantic drops in active subscriber counts in China's telecom providers [2].
I also vehemently disagree "the evidence would be clearly visible". History is littered with genocides on a massive scale that were successfully covered up. We still don't know exactly how many people died in the Holocaust or Holodomor, for example (estimates vary by millions). So this claim that you cannot cover up deaths is clearly false.
It's also very likely the US is over-reporting numbers.
For example, studies have shown US death certificates have "major errors" the majority of the time [3], and several US states have counted unrelated deaths as "COVID" deaths, including Washington State (later partially corrected) [4].
I also disagree with your claim that evidence of China's data manipulation does not count because it's 'six months old', you can't wave away evidence like that.
A single claim about a delivery of urns but nothing reported after about those urns being used. They could easily have been ordered in anticipation of things going pear-shaped and then re-sold when the death rate remained stable. As for the telcom subscriber number, the very article itself posits a more rational expanation -- migrants who would normally have a second cell plan for their current work city not getting these during the economic downturn.
It looks like you are still grasping at straws and lacking evidence for the claims being made.
Actually, I provided multiple sources and you provided no counter sources beyond conjecture (like your claim that news articles become false after 6 months). You still haven't addressed the evidence backed by US intelligence, unless you're calling them into question.
You provided two small pieces of data that are each not even strong indicators of your claim let alone conclusive evidence and expect us to pat you on the head and pretend that you delivered some sort of courtroom fait accompli? I guess people are right, the standards here have dropped significantly over the past few years.
The evidence 'backed by US intelligence'? WTF are you talking about? Did you not even read the articles you provided as your 'evidence'? None of them reference US intelligence sources. One is a trade rag describing a single data point without context and the other is a mid-level conservative paper that used random twitter pull quotes to tart up a minor story being passed around the wire services.
India and China both have fewer deaths. The US is also a large and sparsely populated country. Best to suck it up and admit that the US has failed in every aspect and measure to respond to this pandemic.
OP did literally say that they didn't handle the pandemic well. I don't think they're trying to avoid that. If anything, per capita figures would make this even more clear when comparing with the current situation in India and China.
Why would you start both the article and the abstract by saying that the US has experienced more death than any other country when the US also has (by far) the largest population of all countries surveyed?
Reporting the per capita figure would be enough to make the point that the US did not handle the pandemic well. This way it just sounds like unwarranted self-flagellation.