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infection said:
None of those are issues I've ever endorsed, implied, or spoken. But if there's a certain schema of expectation, this speaks to the societal perception of this as a meme that's not grounded in any reality (e.g. I've said those things?). My larger point is that if anyone was blinded to the data, the US is only standing out in terms of larger death totals (3rd largest country in the world, and our population is 4x the population of the largest country in western Europe) and case numbers. The former disappears when you correct for population. The latter remains present, but when you account for the fact that we're testing more and that our positive case numbers aren't translating at all to a proportional increase in deaths, it makes it harder to justify that the US is some large outlier. Unless, of course, we have some wonderful, magical healthcare system that's preventing all these deaths that would otherwise be suggested with such a high case load, but that magical healthcare system isn't something I've been hearing about, certainly not in the last decade. So if one were truly blinded to the data, they'd have an impossible time picking who's the US and who isn't when controlling for population.

The bottom line is that this is a pandemic. This is a virus. There are many variables that will account for what transpires with the virus, and politics is only a small part of that. What we're convincing ourselves is that politics is the main variable in the equation of COVID outcomes. And that's just not true. The US is not exceeding or "winning" on COVID compared to other nations. But the US is also not this drastic failure on COVID that everyone is talking about. If you'd like to make an argument otherwise, let's talk data. Let's not talk "hey, a lot of people are saying this, so it probably true."
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You say "the US is only standing out in terms of larger death totals (3rd largest country in the world, and our population is 4x the population of the largest country in western Europe) and case numbers."
Nah, the US also stands out for having a leader that says it will just magically go away. That the warm weather will kill it. That injecting disinfectant might be a good idea. Etc etc etc. There is no other country with a leader as idiotic as trump and that definitely makes us stand out.

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fishonjazz said:
You say "the US is only standing out in terms of larger death totals (3rd largest country in the world, and our population is 4x the population of the largest country in western Europe) and case numbers."
Nah, the US also stands out for having a leader that says it will just magically go away. That the warm weather will kill it. That injecting disinfectant might be a good idea. Etc etc etc. There is no other country with a leader as idiotic as trump and that definitely makes us stand out.

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And how does that translate to the data?
 
infection said:
And how does that translate to the data?
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I believe the meme you didn't like was about how we handled the pandemic. How your leader leads is a part of it imo. Our leader leads like a douchebag.

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infection said:
I'm not sure how to respond to that. The first thing I'd note is quite possibly a certain level of irony when you're saying China's reports are accurate, while simultaneously not being able to access that website from China. The other is that multiple sources other than Johns Hopkins have stated the US has done more testing. I could be wrong, but my supposition on why they're saying that isn't because they think the US' response has been amazing or because they're in love with the administration. But let's play along with the numbers for a moment:

90 million tests? They're reporting that they've had a total of 84,125 confirmed cases. If we were to pretend, for instance, that the specificity for the testing was 99.9% (which is an ungodly generous number), then you'd see 90k cases from false positives alone! So China's either not being forthcoming about 1) the number of cases, 2) the number of tests, or 3) both.

I can't speak for or discount your personal experience of what you've witnessed with regard to testing. But I'd be curious when seeing a lot of testing there, how your ability to quantify that by observation is able to differentiate 100k from 1M from 10M from 200M. It reminds me of this scene from Harry Crumb:

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First, I can access that website just not the article you posted. It says not available. It might be now. Regardless it left off other countries besides China that made the statement false about USA testing more in a month then any country overall.

With my edit I agreed USA might have more tests than China if you count individual tests and not people tested. USA is not doing as good at efficient tests like other countries. Thats not the false statement I'm talking about. The false statement is USA tested more in July then any country has tested at all.

I can't say that I saw the exact number of people being tested but I know that they claimed to test a certain number of people in mass in Beijing when they were having cases for 30+ people for a few days. Yes, they do mass testing and there is plenty of evidence for it. Yes, they want to stop the virus at all costs here and take it to the extreme.

I was in the city and drove around. I saw many parks in Beijing with lines miles long with people spaced out to test. Everyone I know in the areas mass tested got tested and they said they went with their entire housing complex at the same time. Each complex is massive some in the 100k range. Areas that have millions in high risk were closed off and I had to detour a lot to get around them until tests were done which took a few days.

Tests are in shortage in USA and many places. China is supplying most of the tests in the world.

No, it's does not have to be that one of those things are false from China like you claim. You can excessively test. China doesn't count false positives. They only count confirmed cases. They retest to make sure before counting it. They also don't count asymptomatic cases the same, they count that separately, which are not included in those numbers you posted. I don't like that they count things that way, but that's how they do it.

There are reasons to discount some of the info from China about this virus, same with the USA.
 
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infection said:
The reason I did deaths per 100k and tests by total is because that's the data set I had. I had wanted consistency and was going to do that, but wasn't going to calculate those out from the data set I was using. I appreciate you linking it above. With regard to why the ones weren't disclosed, it's because they were not listed on the data set I provided (go click the link), and I didn't want to fill them in with different sources. But those were France, Switzerland, and Sweden. If you'll look at the results you've linked above, those omissions do not diminish my point but support it. So thank you for bringing that to the table.
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How do you figure it supports your position?
Testing numbers are high, but still within relatively close distance to a lot of the other countries, and also pales in comparison to the United Kingdom. I guess I’m not following the point you’re trying to make.
 
For all of you interested, I've been listening to an MIT seminar about Covid & cities, including a pretty interesting presentation on epidemic spreading through public transit. Some of these are a bit nerdy. You can subscribe here: https://achegut.typeform.com/to/PVeUgGRK

It´s free.

Next set of presentations are on Aug 13, about the impact of covid on real state.
 
First time I've played in a pick-up game since March and I end up guarding Jack Ryan (NYC street ball legend, they did a 30 for 30 about him).

Got off light - he only humiliated me once.
 
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