This morning, President Trump tweeted:
You will never hear this on the Fake News concerning the China Virus, but by comparison to most other countries, who are suffering greatly, we are doing very well – and we have done things that few other countries could have done!
If one construes this statement as saying that the U.S. is doing very well in comparison to most other countries, as opposed to most other countries “who are suffering greatly,” the claim is false, as this chart makes clear. And that’s how I construe Trump’s statement, given the placement of the commas in the tweet.
But the Washington Post, in challenging Trump’s tweet, also distorts the record. The Post’s Philip Bump, walks his readers through “metric after metric” in an effort to make the U.S. look bad. But he never gets around to the one metric that matters far more than all others — how we stack when it comes to deaths per capita in countries that it makes sense to compare us to.
What countries does it make sense to compare the U.S. to? First, countries whose data can be trusted. This eliminates China, Iran, and Russia, for example.
Second, countries that, broadly speaking, are similarly situated to the U.S. This means countries that (1) like the U.S., had substantial interaction with people from places where the Wuhan virus broke out early on and (2) countries that, like the U.S., have many large population centers. I think it also means countries that lacked experience dealing with outbreaks of Asian viruses.
It makes no sense to compare the U.S. to out of the way nations with only a few substantial cities. One would not expect the virus to have gained a strong foothold in such places.
The countries I think it makes the most sense to compare the U.S. to are Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Great Britain. How do we compare to these nations on the crucial statistic of deaths per capita?
Right now, we’re second out of six, ahead of all but Germany. However, we’re almost certain to surpass France very soon, which would drop us to third out of six. If we add Canada to the mix, we would be in the middle of the pack — fourth out of seven.
Thus, contrary to what Trump says, we’re not doing “very well.” But neither are we doing poorly, as the Post would have its readers believe.
Might our deaths per capita catch up with those of Italy, Spain, and Great Britain? With deaths from the virus rising steadily in the U.S., but not in those three countries, it’s certainly possible. However, we have a long way to go. Deaths per one million people in the U.S. stand at 438. In Italy, they are at 580. In Spain, they are higher than that and in Britain, considerably higher.
It’s possible, though not always easy, to get honest assessments of America’s performance in dealing with the pandemic from a health standpoint. But you won’t get them from President Trump or from the Washington Post.
