Not gonna argue with any of those percentages and I'm glad that death percentages are as low as they are, that's definitely a positive. But you also can't cherry pick and subtract states when looking at the US as a whole.
You can absolutely cherry-pick and subtract states in this scenario - it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, and the death toll numbers reported in NYC in particular distort the picture when applied to the nation as a whole. NYC has a very high population density, very high use of crowded public transportation, and elderly folks that tested COVID positive were sent back to stay in nursing homes where they infected many more elderly, driving the numbers up. This is not typical for most places in the US or the world.
Over 3,000 more deaths in the last three days. And again, other wealthy/affluent countries like the US don't have this problem. I'll say that over and over again.
Other countries like the U.S. took this seriously and have started to successfully move on a long time ago. The fact that we still can't get our shit together is so frustrating.
Back in March if Trump had just said, "Hey everyone, we need to wear a mask, practice social distancing, and I'm going to send a ton of money and supplies to states to test as many people as possible, so go get a test" we would have had this taken care of by May. But no, he was saying as of July that it was still a hoax.
And yeah, the media has definitely fanned the flames, I won't argue that.
I'm definitely not a person who thinks the virus is a "hoax" but the fact is, for the vast majority of people, it's not nearly as bad as it has been made out to be. And the media has been hugely irresponsible with their fear-mongering and sensationalism. For example, when reporting on data stating that, based on antibody testing, infection rates appear to be higher than anticipated with most infected people being asymptomatic, a sane analysis would be that the virus is not as bad as expected for the majority of the population and that a higher infection rate means that the mortality rate of COVID has proven to be much lower than initially feared. But no, lresented with thus exact data, I have seen multiple media outlets twist the narrative to say that the higher infection numbers are a scary sign that we haven't been able to contain the spread and the virus is more contagious than we had originally anticipated. While the latter may be true, it is irrelevant if the data shows that most people are unnafected by the virus and it actually has a fairly low mortality rate.
But as of today 165,000 Americans have died in under 6 months. And I don't care if they are mostly older people, that's someone's grandmother and grandfather who went earlier than they should have.
There is no way that 165,000 Americans have died from COVID in the past 6 months. The numbers are totally false. And I'm not some crackpot conspiracy theorist; I am, however, interested in honestly reporting and analysing data. Here is a quick rundown of things to consider:
We know that there are scenarios where state governments have been witholding numbers. Florida was a widely-covered example:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/ And Trump has been pushing for less testing because more testing "makes the numbers look bad"
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing-slow-down-response/index.html This kind of thing is absolutely assinine. Hard data and statistical numbers should not be politicized. Unfortunately they have been, and therefore cannot be trusted. Various grouos, on both sides, have self-interests in falsifying the data.
Beyond mere distortions and obscufation, however, some basic research shows that, once again, the numbers are totally false and exaggerated. The CDC has very specific guidelines for certifying cause of death. These standards have been in place since 2003
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/revisions-of-the-us-standard-certificates-and-reports.htmHowever, when COVID came on the scene, new temporary, COVID-specific guidlines were drawn up and enacted in April 2020:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/coding-and-reporting.htm Note that the Alril 2020 version nagates the importance ofin their role as the cause of death, as underlying conditions get listed in Line II, immediated cause of death is listed in Line I.
Line II is ignored in reporting the statistics. So if you have congenital heart failure and the Dr. gives you a month to live, then you die in a week and they say you had COVID (which, per the CDC document, can be an opinion, no test required) it gets marked as a COVID death. If, however, you had congenital heart failure, caught the flu, and died, then the cause of death eould (rightly) be listed as congenital heart failure, with the flu listed in Line II as a contributing factor.
And this is the government's official position in counting COVID deaths. They don't try to hide it, the media just will not report it or question them on it. Here is the Govenor of IL in an official press conference laying out the facts, starting at 15:05:
https://youtu.be/vM4_xJYD1uk "The case definition is very simplistic. It means, at the time of death, umm, it was a COVID positive diagnosis. So that means that if you were in hospice and had already been given, you know, a few weeks to live and then you also were found to have COVID that would be counted as a COVID death. It means that if, umm, technically, even if you died of clear alternate cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death. So, umm, everyone who's listed as a COVID death doesn't mean that that was the cause of the death, but they had COVID at the time of death."
So they are openly admitting that the numbers they are publishing are largely worthless, though these numbers are continuing to be used as the basis to shut down vast swaths of the economy and educstion system, whicb will have deep and long-term negative consequences. Clearly nobody wants to loose their parents or grandparents early - at the same time, we have to be realistic about the numbers. If COVID shaves a few weeks of of someone's life that already has a terminal condition, of course it's sad - but is that worth keeoing kids out of school for? Is that worth reducing their levels of education in an increasingly competitive worldwide talent and labor market? No. And, as nofed above, the majority of these nursing home deaths could have been avoided by not sending infected patients back into the nursing homes. Instead of nebulous directives to all fkr things like masks, a truly effective measure would have been to not put these eldery populations at risk by quarantining positive patients.
And if a complete misrepresentation of the data wasn't enough, the CDC completely bungled their job of counting and tracking cases on top of using dubious definitions in the certificstion process. The CDC has admitted that their numbers are totally bogus as they have not been tracking individual cases, just raw data. This includes people who have been tested multiple times as well as adding antibidy test totals to active-virus testing totals, equating to double-dipping and inflating the totals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/us/politics/coronavirus-tests-cdc.html and another example
https://www.livescience.com/cdc-combined-covid-19-diagnostic-and-antibody-tests.htmlMeanehile, the media continues to say that Sweden not locking down was a "disaster"..... when the data shows that their plan worked well as deaths and new infections have dramatically tapered-off after an initial spike
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/ Over the long-term, "flattening the curve" appears to be more problematic by prolonging the time the virus sticks around, and the longer it takes to get our economy back on-track, the more detrimental effects we're going to see on that front as well.