Flash Falasca wrote:
I hope this is correct !!
So many facts! So little time!
When Trump claimed in his scripted opening remarks on Monday that “Germany and the United States are leading the world in lives saved per 100,000,” and later ad-libbed that “Germany and the United States are the two best in deaths per 100,000,” he appeared to be referring to the latest statistics on deaths in only the eight countries with the most confirmed cases of Covid-19. In that ranking, if all of the other countries on Earth are ignored, it is true that the U.S. mortality rate is the seventh-worst and the German one the eight-worst.
051220_mrA chart posted online by researchers at Johns Hopkins showed mortality rates as of May 11 for the 10 countries with the most recorded Covid-19 infections. Photo: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center
But that is very different from “leading the world in lives saved.” The fact is that while six Western European countries do have more deaths per capita from Covid-19 than the U.S., there are more than 130 countries with lower mortality rates than America, including Germany, which is far lower. As of May 11, according to statistics updated daily by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the U.S. had 24.66 deaths from Covid-19 per 100,000 citizens, compared to just 9.24 per 100,000 citizens in Germany.
What this means is that if the federal government in Washington had been as successful at keeping its citizens alive as the one in Berlin, the death toll in the U.S. would not be, as it is today, 82,246, but 30,817 instead.
In other words, Trump is engaged in a kind of statistical sleight-of-hand, one that seems designed to distract attention from the fact that more than 50,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19 would still be alive today had he managed the crisis as well as Angela Merkel.
Updated: Tuesday, May 12, 5:47 p.m. PDT
This article was updated with the latest Covid-19 mortality rates for the 10 countries with the most confirmed cases as of May 11.