Summary:
The President's keeps saying that the US has the lowest Corona-virus fatality rate in the world. And he keeps talking about how we have a high number of cases because we test more. The game he is playing is evident, but I keep waiting for the talking heads to point it out and being disappointed. He is referring to the US case-fatality rate, not the per-capita fatality rate. More testing lowers the case-fatality rate (deaths/case), simply by increasing the denominator. But it simultaneously raises the infection rate (cases/population) by the same proportion, leaving what we are really concerned about, the per-capita mortality rate (deaths/population =(deaths/cases) * (cases/ population)) unaffected. And on this measure, the US is the 7th highest in the world, at 39.82 deaths per 100,000.
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The President's keeps saying that the US has the lowest Corona-virus fatality rate in the world. And he keeps talking about how we have a high number of cases because we test more. The game he is playing is evident, but I keep waiting for the talking heads to point it out and being disappointed. He is referring to the US case-fatality rate, not the per-capita fatality rate. More testing lowers the case-fatality rate (deaths/case), simply by increasing the denominator. But it simultaneously raises the infection rate (cases/population) by the same proportion, leaving what we are really concerned about, the per-capita mortality rate (deaths/population =(deaths/cases) * (cases/ population)) unaffected. And on this measure, the US is the 7th highest in the world, at 39.82 deaths per 100,000. (I ignore San Marino and Andorra, because the measured rate is meaningless with such tiny numbers). We are below Italy, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Belgium, France. But we are far above Germany (10.88), Canada (23.61), Mexico (24.66), Iran (13) and a host of others.
The President's keeps saying that the US has the lowest Corona-virus fatality rate in the world. And he keeps talking about how we have a high number of cases because we test more. The game he is playing is evident, but I keep waiting for the talking heads to point it out and being disappointed. He is referring to the US case-fatality rate, not the per-capita fatality rate. More testing lowers the case-fatality rate (deaths/case), simply by increasing the denominator. But it simultaneously raises the infection rate (cases/population) by the same proportion, leaving what we are really concerned about, the per-capita mortality rate (deaths/population =(deaths/cases) * (cases/ population)) unaffected. And on this measure, the US is the 7th highest in the world, at 39.82 deaths per 100,000.
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