|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On January 04 2021 18:55 StasisField wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2021 18:22 Broetchenholer wrote:
I am not disputing that he fucked up royally in his Corona response, but the US is so uniquely challenged in it's health care system and rampant wealth distribution gap that its hard to compare the states with any European country. The level of medical therapy and science available to the upper class in a pandemic really means nothing if it's not available to the poor. Same time, if the poor can't afford to socially distance, those measures can't work either. The US did do worse then all the countries on Rens list for demographic reasons, the question is, did the do better then brasil, Russia or maybe India? The US is 3x larger than India and India has nearly 1 billion more people than the US. When it comes to minimizing the deaths per million in a pandemic, the US should do better than India. Also, the deaths per million for Russia, Brazil, and India are: Russia: 408 Brazil: 936 India: 111 And, as a reminder, the US's is 1101. Oh wow, look at that. The US did worse than all 3 of the countries you listed. Maybe the US's pandemic response really was just dog shit and we should stop wasting our time defending a man whose response to covid-19 included demonizing his own public health officials, pushing bleach as a cure, and openly mocking the use of masks. I grabbed the data from the link RenSC2 provided earlier: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/
Okay, i am not sure how my post could be read as defending the president or the government or the social structure of the US. To be clear. I am saying i expect the american death toll to be higher than any european country, because the US is SO bad at keeping their people alive. That the government response was makeing it worse is added to that. India makes no sense though, yes, you are right, they also have a super young population, so it's definetely not a country to compare the States to. Brasil is probably also very young and i am not sure if the urban population is comparable, they are both around 85% but i don't know if the urbainisation is comparable or if the urban center are much denser compared to the states.
Maybe other countries would be better, but the fact that it is not the G7 that make the most sense is a really bad grade for the american health system.
|
On January 05 2021 06:34 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 05:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Best measure of performance is relative to what was possible, not what happened elsewhere. Easily said, much less easily made real. Truth is that the spread of the coronavirus ended up being so insidious that not a lot of countries ended up looking very effective in their response by the one-year mark. Success seems to be far more fleeting than failure in the long game of containment and mitigation. You wouldn't be wrong to point to lots of mistakes that were made that exacerbated the infection and death rates, some of which were indefensible. It would be fair to also make note of some of the key successes and the infrastructural problems that nothing could be done about. One way or another, a remarkably large swathe of countries ended up in the same spot, leaving the US to look unremarkable despite its leadership's many obvious failings. I find it hard to justify saying "Trump did a uniquely bad job at managing the medical response" in light of that, and none of the arguments so far have made a meaningful case to the contrary. When there's lots of ways to fail and few ways to succeed, failure is the norm. It's really quite vapid to focus on the "what could have been" that didn't play out in almost any comparable country.
So, what country are you comparing yourself to to come to that conclusion? Look at the list above. The states are the 7nd highest nation in deaths/capita world wide. That's like saying Turkey is a democratic country because it is ranked 110 on the democracy index, clearly a median. How is 7th worst outcome acceptable?
|
On January 05 2021 07:38 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 06:34 LegalLord wrote:On January 05 2021 05:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Best measure of performance is relative to what was possible, not what happened elsewhere. Easily said, much less easily made real. Truth is that the spread of the coronavirus ended up being so insidious that not a lot of countries ended up looking very effective in their response by the one-year mark. Success seems to be far more fleeting than failure in the long game of containment and mitigation. You wouldn't be wrong to point to lots of mistakes that were made that exacerbated the infection and death rates, some of which were indefensible. It would be fair to also make note of some of the key successes and the infrastructural problems that nothing could be done about. One way or another, a remarkably large swathe of countries ended up in the same spot, leaving the US to look unremarkable despite its leadership's many obvious failings. I find it hard to justify saying "Trump did a uniquely bad job at managing the medical response" in light of that, and none of the arguments so far have made a meaningful case to the contrary. When there's lots of ways to fail and few ways to succeed, failure is the norm. It's really quite vapid to focus on the "what could have been" that didn't play out in almost any comparable country. It’s not like crossroads were reached with many unknowns and we’re sitting bemoaning the road not taken. That kind of navel gazing after the fact with the benefit of hindsight is rather futile, agreed there. Smarter people than I will pore over this with a fine toothcomb when it finally does settle down, and perhaps short of locking people up results in comparable nations will level out to some kind of mean. Specifically the Trump administration vs the wider US response at every juncture where leadership and sound judgement were required, almost every time it wasn’t. Aside from practicalities of particular note has been the downplaying of the virus, using it for political purposes, giving terrible public advice etc etc that is actually quite unique amongst leadership of comparable nations. Which is probably the worst thing of all given that as I said, short of authoritarian crackdowns there is probably some average kind of result that is realistic with a combination of some curtailing of personal freedoms plus the population buying in and hitting the trenches. If you’re not failing by incompetence but in actual intent and messaging in trying to cultivate that public buy-in it is a shocking abrogation of responsibility. Now that is pretty unique to the States, we shall see if that does have an appreciable effect in the longer-term. If I was a betting man, which thankfully for my bank balance I am not, the States has more Covid skeptics than elsewhere, partly because of that and I don’t think that bodes well in terms of the compliance needed in the public sphere
In 20/20 hindsight, the right course of action that I believe would have done the most good would have been to order a halt to all international passenger flights right when China locked down Wuhan (the point at which it was abundantly clear that this was not a false alarm). Handling issues such as international backlash, airline compensation, and repatriation would be small fry compared to the alternative. But there was essentially no possibility of that happening, so it's hardly worth debating such scenarios.
I agree that Trump's administration dropped the ball on quite a lot of things, especially with messaging and administration. I don't think that's anywhere near unique though - the world realized two months too late that this is a once-in-a-lifetime disaster and the response was similarly inadequate. And the US wasn't the only country with lackluster messaging and a willful population that would be dragged kicking and screaming into complying with the measures required to stop the spread. Short-termism is deeply prevalent in a lot of our societies.
No, I'd say that where Trump & company really failed was in the economic response to the crisis. The federal government acted quickly and decisively to save the fortunes of asset-holders (i.e. the wealthy) but did a truly gutter-tier job at protecting the vulnerable working class and allocating finances to support necessary pandemic-suppressing efforts (the current vaccine's logistical bottleneck is a great example). I do, for example, remember being sick with severe flu-like symptoms in early March - could have very well been the corvid disease. Did I stay home? Of course not; as an employee in the US I know better than to expect that my employer would look favorably upon prioritizing health over getting my work done. Problems like that are uniquely American, and I fully expect to see some severe backlash to that on the other end of the pandemic.
|
We managed to convince our populace that Trickle-Down Economics was anything but a giant fucking scam, so what you're describing not only sounds like a breath of fresh air, it also sounds very unusual. Our government has, is, and will 100% give gigantic sums to corporations, no questions asked, and under the pretense of helping employees, only to either feign shock or say nothing at all when they just pocket the money. Business as usual for the ruling class in America.
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/06/11/na061120-kurzarbeit-germanys-short-time-work-benefit
That's a broad overview of how it works in germany. It was then subsequently copied by the UK in october, if memory serves me right. No idea about other countries in europe.
I am saying i expect the american death toll to be higher than any european country, because the US is SO bad at keeping their people alive.
That's worded wrong. If i'm bad at something, it's because i don't have talent or don't have enough experience. The US isn't bad at keeping the population alive - they don't care whether or not people die. The government, that is - obviously "the people" prefers to keep their families alive.
I agree that Trump's administration dropped the ball on quite a lot of things, especially with messaging and administration. I don't think that's anywhere near unique though - the world realized two months too late that this is a once-in-a-lifetime disaster and the response was similarly inadequate. And the US wasn't the only country with lackluster messaging and a willful population that would be dragged kicking and screaming into complying with the measures required to stop the spread. Short-termism is deeply prevalent in a lot of our societies.
This argument only stands if you accept that the US should be compared to third world countries like Brazil. Even the UK, which is constantly dropping the ball, flip flopping on issues like schools re-opening, saying things one day and doing a 180 three days later, still had better messaging than the US. With an oaf as prime minister who went on televised record saying "i won't stop shaking hands", a few days before he almost kicked the bucket.
I'd be very surprised if you'd find another western country that flat out bullshitted its population to this day. That's utter nonsense.
|
On January 05 2021 08:28 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 06:34 LegalLord wrote:On January 05 2021 05:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Best measure of performance is relative to what was possible, not what happened elsewhere. Easily said, much less easily made real. Truth is that the spread of the coronavirus ended up being so insidious that not a lot of countries ended up looking very effective in their response by the one-year mark. Success seems to be far more fleeting than failure in the long game of containment and mitigation. You wouldn't be wrong to point to lots of mistakes that were made that exacerbated the infection and death rates, some of which were indefensible. It would be fair to also make note of some of the key successes and the infrastructural problems that nothing could be done about. One way or another, a remarkably large swathe of countries ended up in the same spot, leaving the US to look unremarkable despite its leadership's many obvious failings. I find it hard to justify saying "Trump did a uniquely bad job at managing the medical response" in light of that, and none of the arguments so far have made a meaningful case to the contrary. When there's lots of ways to fail and few ways to succeed, failure is the norm. It's really quite vapid to focus on the "what could have been" that didn't play out in almost any comparable country. So, what country are you comparing yourself to to come to that conclusion? Look at the list above. The states are the 7nd highest nation in deaths/capita world wide. That's like saying Turkey is a democratic country because it is ranked 110 on the democracy index, clearly a median. How is 7th worst outcome acceptable?
Reference being Worldometers, 7th by infection per capita and 13th by death per capita. So a little better than what you described.
I'd compare it to the 10 or so countries above and below it for death per capita? They're all within about 30 percent, which is about the margin of reliability of the infection tracking mechanisms used to tally up those numbers. If the US failed in its response to the pandemic (no real argument that it did), it certainly doesn't seem unique among developed-world nations in doing so.
|
On January 05 2021 08:39 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 08:28 Broetchenholer wrote:On January 05 2021 06:34 LegalLord wrote:On January 05 2021 05:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Best measure of performance is relative to what was possible, not what happened elsewhere. Easily said, much less easily made real. Truth is that the spread of the coronavirus ended up being so insidious that not a lot of countries ended up looking very effective in their response by the one-year mark. Success seems to be far more fleeting than failure in the long game of containment and mitigation. You wouldn't be wrong to point to lots of mistakes that were made that exacerbated the infection and death rates, some of which were indefensible. It would be fair to also make note of some of the key successes and the infrastructural problems that nothing could be done about. One way or another, a remarkably large swathe of countries ended up in the same spot, leaving the US to look unremarkable despite its leadership's many obvious failings. I find it hard to justify saying "Trump did a uniquely bad job at managing the medical response" in light of that, and none of the arguments so far have made a meaningful case to the contrary. When there's lots of ways to fail and few ways to succeed, failure is the norm. It's really quite vapid to focus on the "what could have been" that didn't play out in almost any comparable country. So, what country are you comparing yourself to to come to that conclusion? Look at the list above. The states are the 7nd highest nation in deaths/capita world wide. That's like saying Turkey is a democratic country because it is ranked 110 on the democracy index, clearly a median. How is 7th worst outcome acceptable? Reference being Worldometers, 7th by infection per capita and 13th by death per capita. So a little better than what you described. I'd compare it to the 10 or so countries above and below it for death per capita? They're all within about 30 percent, which is about the margin of reliability of the infection tracking mechanisms used to tally up those numbers. If the US failed in its response to the pandemic (no real argument that it did), it certainly doesn't seem unique among developed-world nations in doing so. Why do infection tracking margins matter when your looking at deaths?
And your ignoring massive issues like population density which play a big role in how effective the virus is for obvious reasons.
|
On January 05 2021 08:31 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +I agree that Trump's administration dropped the ball on quite a lot of things, especially with messaging and administration. I don't think that's anywhere near unique though - the world realized two months too late that this is a once-in-a-lifetime disaster and the response was similarly inadequate. And the US wasn't the only country with lackluster messaging and a willful population that would be dragged kicking and screaming into complying with the measures required to stop the spread. Short-termism is deeply prevalent in a lot of our societies.
This argument only stands if you accept that the US should be compared to third world countries like Brazil. Even the UK, which is constantly dropping the ball, flip flopping on issues like schools re-opening, saying things one day and doing a 180 three days later, still had better messaging than the US. With an oaf as prime minister who went on televised record saying "i won't stop shaking hands", a few days before he almost kicked the bucket. I'd be very surprised if you'd find another western country that flat out bullshitted its population to this day. That's utter nonsense.
Debatable primarily because "better/worse messaging" as you use it seems to be a purely qualitative factor. I would posit that messaging such as Sweden's intelligent-sounding fake news killed far more people per capita than Trump's ego on parade, even if the latter looks that much dumber on its face. I suppose we'll see if Trump's current lack of introspection in messaging will kill more people in the long run than countries with leadership that "learned their lesson" - so far, seems not.
On January 05 2021 08:47 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 08:39 LegalLord wrote:On January 05 2021 08:28 Broetchenholer wrote:On January 05 2021 06:34 LegalLord wrote:On January 05 2021 05:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Best measure of performance is relative to what was possible, not what happened elsewhere. Easily said, much less easily made real. Truth is that the spread of the coronavirus ended up being so insidious that not a lot of countries ended up looking very effective in their response by the one-year mark. Success seems to be far more fleeting than failure in the long game of containment and mitigation. You wouldn't be wrong to point to lots of mistakes that were made that exacerbated the infection and death rates, some of which were indefensible. It would be fair to also make note of some of the key successes and the infrastructural problems that nothing could be done about. One way or another, a remarkably large swathe of countries ended up in the same spot, leaving the US to look unremarkable despite its leadership's many obvious failings. I find it hard to justify saying "Trump did a uniquely bad job at managing the medical response" in light of that, and none of the arguments so far have made a meaningful case to the contrary. When there's lots of ways to fail and few ways to succeed, failure is the norm. It's really quite vapid to focus on the "what could have been" that didn't play out in almost any comparable country. So, what country are you comparing yourself to to come to that conclusion? Look at the list above. The states are the 7nd highest nation in deaths/capita world wide. That's like saying Turkey is a democratic country because it is ranked 110 on the democracy index, clearly a median. How is 7th worst outcome acceptable? Reference being Worldometers, 7th by infection per capita and 13th by death per capita. So a little better than what you described. I'd compare it to the 10 or so countries above and below it for death per capita? They're all within about 30 percent, which is about the margin of reliability of the infection tracking mechanisms used to tally up those numbers. If the US failed in its response to the pandemic (no real argument that it did), it certainly doesn't seem unique among developed-world nations in doing so. Why do infection tracking margins matter when your looking at deaths? And your ignoring massive issues like population density which play a big role in how effective the virus is for obvious reasons.
Need to know whether or not the dead died of the disease, for one.
If the argument is not "the US did a lot worse than other first-world nations" but rather "the US did about as bad as most first-world nations, which is worse because it should have been a lot less vulnerable" then you have a lot more to prove to justify that. I agree that the demographics in Europe are really unfortunate for a pandemic, but the case has not yet been successfully made that Trump-led USA is uniquely bad by-the-numbers.
|
Norway28873 Posts
Meh, if you look at the countries above the US on that list, I think the UK is the only one that's really comparable, and it's also the only one where the political response was comparable. The rest (other than Belgium - where I still have the impression the numbers are inflated compared to other countries, even though it's been a while since I looked into that) really can't be expected to have a response comparable to what the US should be capable of. I'm not delving into the math right now, but I'm guessing if you compare the US to the countries above the US on the list of deaths per capita, the US prolly has like.. twice the gdp per capita?
I mean, I don't actually know if the political leadership is the most consequential factor. I do think Trump's response was the worst of any western leader - but I dunno to what degree this was the most significant factor in explaining the bad response from 'the country'. As a Norwegian, I think it's absurd that you'd go to work with flu like symptoms even without the possibility of a pandemic, and this (that I expected American workers to keep going to work because of worse worker rights), to me, always seemed like a reason for why the american catastrophe was particularly predictable.
But really, the only country to have performed significantly worse than expected, to me, is Sweden. Otherwise, Western countries seem to have performed relatively close to expectation (in relation to other countries), based on factors like population density, compliance of the population, existing worker rights and political leanings (In Norway, our labor party accused our conservative governing party of adopting labor party policies to deal with Covid.) Like, if you compare Canada with the US, I'd picture Canada dealing better with Covid even if you swapped Trudeau and Trump, because the 'preexisting conditions' favor them.
|
A lot hanging on tomorrow's election. Time to feel nervous again.
|
On January 05 2021 11:20 Starlightsun wrote:
A lot hanging on tomorrow's election. Time to feel nervous again.
Wednesday could be scary.
|
|
|
Your article might have made more sense in September, when it was written, than in January, when the winter wave sent Europe's numbers sharply upward, especially in countries that were spared from the first spike. At this point, citing an article using data only up through July seems like some awful cherry-picking.
|
Found out today that somebody I know knew somebody that died of COVID. I'm kind of surprised it took this long.
|
|
|
On January 05 2021 11:20 Starlightsun wrote:
A lot hanging on tomorrow's election. Time to feel nervous again.
Yeah it’s pretty wild. The country will be very different depending on who wins Georgia. Anyone know how long the vote count will take? It was like 3 weeks for the first vote right? So we won’t even know before inauguration?
|
On January 05 2021 08:47 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 08:39 LegalLord wrote:On January 05 2021 08:28 Broetchenholer wrote:On January 05 2021 06:34 LegalLord wrote:On January 05 2021 05:39 Mohdoo wrote:
Best measure of performance is relative to what was possible, not what happened elsewhere. Easily said, much less easily made real. Truth is that the spread of the coronavirus ended up being so insidious that not a lot of countries ended up looking very effective in their response by the one-year mark. Success seems to be far more fleeting than failure in the long game of containment and mitigation. You wouldn't be wrong to point to lots of mistakes that were made that exacerbated the infection and death rates, some of which were indefensible. It would be fair to also make note of some of the key successes and the infrastructural problems that nothing could be done about. One way or another, a remarkably large swathe of countries ended up in the same spot, leaving the US to look unremarkable despite its leadership's many obvious failings. I find it hard to justify saying "Trump did a uniquely bad job at managing the medical response" in light of that, and none of the arguments so far have made a meaningful case to the contrary. When there's lots of ways to fail and few ways to succeed, failure is the norm. It's really quite vapid to focus on the "what could have been" that didn't play out in almost any comparable country. So, what country are you comparing yourself to to come to that conclusion? Look at the list above. The states are the 7nd highest nation in deaths/capita world wide. That's like saying Turkey is a democratic country because it is ranked 110 on the democracy index, clearly a median. How is 7th worst outcome acceptable? Reference being Worldometers, 7th by infection per capita and 13th by death per capita. So a little better than what you described. I'd compare it to the 10 or so countries above and below it for death per capita? They're all within about 30 percent, which is about the margin of reliability of the infection tracking mechanisms used to tally up those numbers. If the US failed in its response to the pandemic (no real argument that it did), it certainly doesn't seem unique among developed-world nations in doing so. Why do infection tracking margins matter when your looking at deaths? And your ignoring massive issues like population density which play a big role in how effective the virus is for obvious reasons.
You cant look at population density alone. The usa has large areas where noone lives which bring the average density down. The suburbs of the usa also have a lower density then the suburbs in europe (we dont really have suburbs i guess) and that also bring the average down while it doesnt effect the spread all that much.
People get infected at work,at home,when shopping,possibly when using public transport.when going to social activitys like churches and sports. And when it comes to those places the usa is similar to almost any european nation.
Population density is almost a non issue when it comes to spread in western nations. What is important is how often people meet and the group seize when they meet and when it comes to that i dont think the usa is significantly different from any european nation.
The usa didnt do worse then france,the uk,italy,spain,belgium,the netherlands. As much as i dislike trump,the usa didnt do terribly bad when compared to "comparable"countries. We all did bad with germany beeing the only exception and they have been struggling as well lately.
I can understand why the liberals in this thread seem to think that the usa did horrible though,because all the media has been telling them is how terrible the usa did,talking about patriotism lol. Party politics and putting down the opposing party is more important then objective reporting though that isnt something new.
I do agree with legallord though that the economic response was worse then europes response. There was a big article in some newspaper about that recently as well though i can not remember where i saw it.
Vaccination strategy in the netherlands has been revealed. Lots of things are very unclear. 1.8m people (10% of the population) gets priority (after healthcare workers and vulnerable people) based on "medical indication"but it is completely unclear what "medical indication"is and who determines it or if you can apply for it yourself. I am pretty disapointed thus far with our aproach to the vaccination programme to say the least.
|
On January 05 2021 13:17 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 12:27 LegalLord wrote:Your article might have made more sense in September, when it was written, than in January, when the winter wave sent Europe's numbers sharply upward, especially in countries that were spared from the first spike. At this point, citing an article using data only up through July seems like some awful cherry-picking. Has it gotten better for the US compared to Europe recently? From a death perspective (per 100k) the only place I see worse is the UK and its not much, the rest range from substantially better to way better. The US also has a higher growth rate. Europe just puts in measures way sooner than the US, we do the same thing here, if we were a state we would be in the top 5 for lowest daily infections and yet we went full lock down, and as a country we have 1/10 the population and 1/25 the deaths on a rolling 7 day average. If the person was cherry picking data they did it wrong it would look worse with current. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/
Not so much better for the US as sharply worse for "Europe" as a whole. Your regular hard-hits like UK, Spain, and Italy saw a modest rise over that timeframe, but if you want to see where it got really bad - take a look at Germany or East Europe. US total death count just about doubled since July, Europe did worse.
US had a bad summer whereas Europe was mostly mildly afflicted, but the daily death count in Europe is much larger than in the US during the winter wave so it's caught up nicely.
|
On January 05 2021 12:27 LegalLord wrote:Your article might have made more sense in September, when it was written, than in January, when the winter wave sent Europe's numbers sharply upward, especially in countries that were spared from the first spike. At this point, citing an article using data only up through July seems like some awful cherry-picking.
So because numbers are changing now, suddenly it doesn't matter that Trump was literally lying about everything COVID-related, actual numbers included, 3 to 6 months ago? Is your argument that he isn't an abject failure of a president and a liar, he's just a visionnaire prophet who simply got slightly confused by his ability to gaze into the future? Also, your accusation of cherry-picking implies there is analysis of similar quality that includes more recent data to show a different conclusion. Do you have any detailed analysis that is more up to date? I don't, so there's nothing to cherry pick from for me. I also don't believe that whatever changes in numbers today, or 6 months from now, would in any way change the fact that early COVID response in the US was absolutely terrible and much worse than COVID response in Europe was, as evident from the article linked. It would simply show that after X period of time, Europe also fucked up, despite their initially better handling of it.
|
On January 05 2021 13:50 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2021 12:27 LegalLord wrote:Your article might have made more sense in September, when it was written, than in January, when the winter wave sent Europe's numbers sharply upward, especially in countries that were spared from the first spike. At this point, citing an article using data only up through July seems like some awful cherry-picking. So because numbers are changing now, suddenly it doesn't matter that Trump was literally lying about everything COVID-related, actual numbers included, 3 to 6 months ago? Is your argument that he isn't an abject failure of a president and a liar, he's just a visionnaire prophet who simply got slightly confused by his ability to gaze into the future? Also, your accusation of cherry-picking implies there is analysis of similar quality that includes more recent data to show a different conclusion. Do you have any detailed analysis that is more up to date? I don't, so there's nothing to cherry pick from for me. I also don't believe that whatever changes in numbers today, or 6 months from now, would in any way change the fact that early COVID response in the US was absolutely terrible and much worse than COVID response in Europe was, as evident from the article linked. It would simply show that after X period of time, Europe also fucked up, despite their initially better handling of it.
The fact that numbers are different now, with Europe deteriorating far worse than the US, changes the story being told based on July numbers, very much so in a way that does indeed make the US look relatively better versus Europe than it did at the time period of data comparison. Nothing more, nothing less. Feel free to have whatever assessment of Trump you like, since this is far less a referendum on Trump's character than on the alleged impact his presidency may or may not have had on pandemic fallout in the US.
Dropping an article without context that is out of date in a significant way is indeed both lazy and cherry-picking. Provided without any of your own analysis and referencing the one cutoff point that would least favorably represent the US when there's literally twice as much data available as was used for said analysis.
As for the article you linked, it's primarily pointless drivel with one key observation of "look how much better Europe's excess death per capita numbers are than the US." We don't have a whole lot of excess death data for full year 2020 right now, but even looking at just reported death data for US vs Europe shows an obvious and profound deterioration of the European situation since about the start of November. Which, incidentally, brings death per capita much closer to parity between the two.
|
Ooh, that second stimulus check just deposited into my bank account. Just in time to make me feel less bad about the cost of those Christmas presents I bought!
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
