BREAKING: The U.S. has overtaken Italy for the highest death toll in the world from coronavirus

[Dennis Donovan]

Link to tweet

The Associated Press ✔@AP

BREAKING: The U.S. has overtaken Italy for the highest death toll in the world from the coronavirus, Johns Hopkins University says.

http://apne.ws/aqS0oda
Virus Outbreak
The latest news on the worldwide virus pandemic.

12:10 PM - Apr 11, 2020

[SheltieLover]

1. Is Putin happy yet?

[denem]

2. USA #1,#1, #1. - MAGA MAGA MAGA !

[Iliyah]

3. Let's see . .

who will t-rump blame today.

[denem]

5. The Democratic Party

just a guess

[dewsgirl]

4. K and R😞

[RockRaven]

6. Highest *acknowledged* death toll. I suspect the US numbers are much higher than

reported. We know "deaths at home" in NYC have gone from 20-some/day to 200+/day, and those dead are not being tested for COVID-19 and were not being included in the reported deaths. And that's just 1 city, albeit a large and strongly affected one. It's happening all over the country.

The US is mis-counting their dead as badly as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

[onenote]

7. The US is not even in the top ten when measured on a per capita basis

And measuring on a per capita basis is the only rational way of comparing nations.

With 59 deaths per 1 million people, the coronavirus has thus far been less lethal in the US than in countries such as Spain (350), Italy (337), Belgium (289), France (202), Netherlands (154), UK (145), and Switzerland (117).

[Hoyt]

9. Don't go injecting facts into the discussion.

[Silent3]

10. Which makes me wonder a lot about the *real* death rate in China.

They've got 3-4 times the US population roughly, but we're supposed to believe they've had fewer total deaths?

On the "plus" side (if you can call this a plus), they've got the level of authoritarian control Trump dreams of, and can impose much stricter safety rules, so that's one reason to believe they've got this pandemic under better control.

On the negative side, I believe they're totally capable of keeping hundreds of thousands of deaths a secret if they want to.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Just wait. US is behind the Italian curve by about two weeks. Lots of doubling yet to come. . . . nt

[onenote]

13. Time will tell. If social distancing stays in place, i doubt we'll top the Italy/Spain levels.

At 100,000 deaths, we'd still be behind the current per capita levels in Spain and Italy (and those levels are continuing to rise).

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. You haven't seen the charts. Italy and Spain have flattened. US is flattening but not there yet.

[Igel]

14. Texas has two sets of educational standards.

One is state produced, the other produced by universities and businesses. The latter's included by reference, but ignored in practice.

The university/business standards for high school science include explicit teaching in the ways that data can be used to lie.

The standards explicitly point out how you can manipulate graphs, esp. the units on the axes, to give the wrong impression. "I lost 160 ounces in the last 6 months" when graphed looks a lot bigger than "I lost 30 pounds in the last six months." And report it as ounces/month instead of lbs/week gives a bigger number. I mean, I've seen majorities of average kids screwed up, juniors and seniors, many in pre-cal or even calculus, simply by labeling the y-axis with negatives so that the slope of a line is flipped. You have to force them to use the point-slope formula and convert everything to the same units, and many resent it--and get pissed off when their first gut-based answer were wrong. "You tricked us." Like nobody outside the classroom would ever do such a thing. A few get it.

Same for percentages versus count. When the count matters, you use it. When the percentage highlights what you think is important, you use that. You can use the difference in presentation for good or for evil. Sadly, for many "good" means "what I want" not "what's actually happening." And they justify it by saying everything's perception anyway and I know I'm looking at a future literature or poli-sci or cultural studies major.

Even worse, you mask what's important by using labels to deceive. That's the "half the US budget is DOD" claim. Leave out the word "discretionary"--half the US discretionary budget--and it's just false. Put it in, and people don't know that there's a large mandatory portion. Worse, they then compare the social services amount of the discretionary budget against the full budget, mandatory and discretionary, so say what a small portion social services takes up. It's just manipulation, and some love it.

And the use of stats beyond simple percentages is worse.

[dalton99a]

8. Now the numbers are officially tremendous and fantastic

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. It didn't have to be this way. It is the Trump Catastrophe. . . . nt