Just to keep track of the nonsense that has wrecked our economy and generally made our politicians run around as if their fool heads were on fire, each day I publish the corona virus total death toll in the US based upon the latest data I can find. A single death is an immense tragedy if you love the person. However, we are not talking about love, but rather public policy, which should always involve a sober analysis of risk and cost. Please recall that in a bad normal flu year our death toll in the US can be as high as 90,000.
Note: this will be a total death toll since the beginning of this bad farce, and not a daily toll. As of the beginning of June 24 the claimed, as suspect as that claim is, death toll is 123,476.
And completely ignored by the lamestream media is the fact that the daily fatality numbers are down from their April peak by at least 70% and as much as 90%, depending on whether one uses a rolling seven-day average or focuses solely on a one-day comparison. Also ignored: on a per capita basis, the US total is among the lowest of all reporting countries. But that can’t be used as fear porn, so instead the media now daily trumpet “surge in cases” or “surge in hospitalizations” headlines, exclusively in Red states, burying deep in any story the actual facts that make such numbers largely nonsense, such as the steady drop in the median age of “new cases”, the fact that most admissions are for issues other than Covid 19 or “flu-like illness”, and the like. This is not to say there is no risk, we all know there is. But media and leftist politicians are already using these distorted numbers to demand more across-the-board lockdowns, which would be absurd at this point.
Let’s acknowledge that the only risk the media cares about is the risk Trump will be reelected if these rallies of his aren’t quashed right now.
Amen to that, Ernst.
Frank – This site puts the US at 7th highest, in terms of coronavirus fatalities per capita. I’m not saying I’d personally stand by every number, but you seem to have it exactly reversed, unless you were talking about a different stat.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
Also ignored: on a per capita basis, the US total is among the lowest of all reporting countries.
Worldometers puts our death rate per resident in 7th place. Ranking higher are Belgium, Britain, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and France. Ranking lower but not much different are Ireland, and the Netherlands.
It looks like occidental rates are converging on a common value, albeit at a different pace. Eastern Europe and Scandinavia have done much better (I suspect because they had more advance warning). The Far East has also done much better, I suspect because using protective equipment during flu season is quite common there and they had ample supplies of it. (I would wager they also had the sense not to stoke epidemics in hospitals and nursing homes).