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yes but it's not like they surveyed every country in the world though. I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were

yes but it's not like they surveyed every country in the world though. I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available. It just does not seem like a meaningful statistic given the sample they are studying.

evgen 6y ago
> I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available. You would be incorrect. Perhaps the reason this death rate was mentioned is because the US is an outlier in both absolute numbers as well as per capita deaths.
- pattusk 6y ago
  I'll probably get downvoted for this, but anyways: Maybe I should have added reliable to data. I'm highly skeptical of the ~4000 deaths figure reported as the death count for China and I have the sense that the authors of the study were too or they would have included it in their study. As for India, when you factor in rural areas, I don't think the reporting and data would be as reliable as for the US. [1] To go back to my original point, I'm not arguing that the US successfully handled COVID. Nor am I trying to demonize China or India. I'm just saying that the author's decision of foregrounding absolute death toll over per capita is poor and misleading given the sample they used. It could be seen as bad faith on the part of the authors when the per capita number can support their argument just as well. [1] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/india-s-coronavirus-cases-pass-7-million-but-death-rate-remains-mysteriously-low https://www.sbs.com.au/news/india-s-coronavirus-cases-pass-7...
  - Nursie 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you're asking here, both are mentioned in the very first sentence - > The US has experienced more deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than any other country and has one of the highest cumulative per capita death rates. Why is that misleading or bad faith?
  - evgen 6y ago
    While I share the skepticism in the numbers from China and India, I believe that if they were anywhere near a similar per capita rate as the US there would be visible evidence. China attacked the problem hard and by all accounts seems to have succeeded. For the most part India seems to have just gotten lucky; maybe India's numbers will be adjusted over time to reveal some rural devastation, but I will want to wait for some real evidence before I group them with the cluster of fuck-up states like the US, Brazil, and UK.
    - nickff 6y ago
      China was trucking in loads of urns every day that were more than ten times larger then their reported death rates; doesn't that count as visible evidence?
      - evgen 6y ago
        Citation needed. This is the first I have heard of this and given how desperately the current administration wants to pin anything COVID-related on to China I think that this would have been widely publicized if it were actually true.
        gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
        China did originate the virus as far as anyone can tell, they were not forthright with evidence, didn’t shut down travel globally and they seemed to push malign influence through the WHO. It’s not hard to see they have lots of blame and that has nothing to do with the US administration.
        evgen 6y ago
        The virus originated in China, but China did not 'originate the virus.' Please do not make unfounded speculation regarding the causality in this event. China has not been completely forthright about the early stages of the covid's spread and they engaged in tactics similar to, but not quite as bad, as what the current US administration and some states have done to try to hide the scope of the disease within their jurisdiction. It seems like a lot of countries have done poorly at communicating with their citizens and with each other regarding covid. China didn't shut down travel fast enough, but by the time things has started to appear and become concerning covid had already left China and was en route to Italy and the west coast of the US. Once the nature of the disease and particularly the asymptomatic transmission stage became clear everyone needed to adjust. To claim this is some fault of the Chinese government is pure BS. As for pushing 'malign' interest, you are entitled to your own opinions but that seems to be another unfounded value judgement that is just as easily dismissed as right-wing propaganda.
  - unishark 6y ago
    It seems likely India has the most total cases already. But India has a much younger population so I don't know if that really translates to twice the deaths that they report.
- unishark 6y ago
  The US is not an outlier in per capita deaths. It is at the higher end of the range, especially among developed countries, though many countries have similar rates (such as most of Latin America). And this statement captures all the info one needs, in my opinion. But abstracts are partly about selling the importance of the paper, so there's some leeway in how facts are presented.
- 0xy 6y ago
  China is not reporting accurate data, so I have no idea how you could possibly say definitively that China's numbers were less than the US on any basis. [1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-con...
  - evgen 6y ago
    We are saying that China's numbers are less than the US because if they were fucking up at a level even close to what the US is going through the evidence would be clearly visible. You cannot hide millions of dead. You can hide the bodies, but not the holes in the population and social structure that comes from losing this many people. So far your only evidence is a report that their case numbers were higher than reported from six months ago. Have anything more recent?
    - 0xy 6y ago
      There's evidence that deliveries of urns to cemeteries was substantially higher than reported death counts [1], as well as gigantic drops in active subscriber counts in China's telecom providers [2]. I also vehemently disagree "the evidence would be clearly visible". History is littered with genocides on a massive scale that were successfully covered up. We still don't know exactly how many people died in the Holocaust or Holodomor, for example (estimates vary by millions). So this claim that you cannot cover up deaths is clearly false. It's also very likely the US is over-reporting numbers. For example, studies have shown US death certificates have "major errors" the majority of the time [3], and several US states have counted unrelated deaths as "COVID" deaths, including Washington State (later partially corrected) [4]. I also disagree with your claim that evidence of China's data manipulation does not count because it's 'six months old', you can't wave away evidence like that. [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/lines-of-urns-in-wuhan-prompt-questions-of-chinas-pandemic-death-toll https://nationalpost.com/news/world/lines-of-urns-in-wuhan-p... [2] https://www.developingtelecoms.com/telecom-business/operator-news/9361-chinese-operators-see-subscriber-numbers-drop.html https://www.developingtelecoms.com/telecom-business/operator... [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/04/25/coronavirus-death-toll-hard-track-1-3-death-certificates-wrong/3020778001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/04/2... [4] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/data-tables/ChangingCriteriaUsedtoReportDeathsReCOVID.pdf https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...

evgen 6y ago

> I would expect China or India to have a higher number of deaths overall if the data were available. You would be incorrect. Perhaps the reason this death rate was mentioned is because the US is an outlier in both absolute numbers as well as per capita deaths.

pattusk 6y ago
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but anyways: Maybe I should have added reliable to data. I'm highly skeptical of the ~4000 deaths figure reported as the death count for China and I have the sense that the authors of the study were too or they would have included it in their study. As for India, when you factor in rural areas, I don't think the reporting and data would be as reliable as for the US. [1] To go back to my original point, I'm not arguing that the US successfully handled COVID. Nor am I trying to demonize China or India. I'm just saying that the author's decision of foregrounding absolute death toll over per capita is poor and misleading given the sample they used. It could be seen as bad faith on the part of the authors when the per capita number can support their argument just as well. [1] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/india-s-coronavirus-cases-pass-7-million-but-death-rate-remains-mysteriously-low https://www.sbs.com.au/news/india-s-coronavirus-cases-pass-7...
- Nursie 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you're asking here, both are mentioned in the very first sentence - > The US has experienced more deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than any other country and has one of the highest cumulative per capita death rates. Why is that misleading or bad faith?
- evgen 6y ago
  While I share the skepticism in the numbers from China and India, I believe that if they were anywhere near a similar per capita rate as the US there would be visible evidence. China attacked the problem hard and by all accounts seems to have succeeded. For the most part India seems to have just gotten lucky; maybe India's numbers will be adjusted over time to reveal some rural devastation, but I will want to wait for some real evidence before I group them with the cluster of fuck-up states like the US, Brazil, and UK.
  - nickff 6y ago
    China was trucking in loads of urns every day that were more than ten times larger then their reported death rates; doesn't that count as visible evidence?
    - evgen 6y ago
      Citation needed. This is the first I have heard of this and given how desperately the current administration wants to pin anything COVID-related on to China I think that this would have been widely publicized if it were actually true.
      - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
        China did originate the virus as far as anyone can tell, they were not forthright with evidence, didn’t shut down travel globally and they seemed to push malign influence through the WHO. It’s not hard to see they have lots of blame and that has nothing to do with the US administration.
        evgen 6y ago
        The virus originated in China, but China did not 'originate the virus.' Please do not make unfounded speculation regarding the causality in this event. China has not been completely forthright about the early stages of the covid's spread and they engaged in tactics similar to, but not quite as bad, as what the current US administration and some states have done to try to hide the scope of the disease within their jurisdiction. It seems like a lot of countries have done poorly at communicating with their citizens and with each other regarding covid. China didn't shut down travel fast enough, but by the time things has started to appear and become concerning covid had already left China and was en route to Italy and the west coast of the US. Once the nature of the disease and particularly the asymptomatic transmission stage became clear everyone needed to adjust. To claim this is some fault of the Chinese government is pure BS. As for pushing 'malign' interest, you are entitled to your own opinions but that seems to be another unfounded value judgement that is just as easily dismissed as right-wing propaganda.
- unishark 6y ago
  It seems likely India has the most total cases already. But India has a much younger population so I don't know if that really translates to twice the deaths that they report.
unishark 6y ago
The US is not an outlier in per capita deaths. It is at the higher end of the range, especially among developed countries, though many countries have similar rates (such as most of Latin America). And this statement captures all the info one needs, in my opinion. But abstracts are partly about selling the importance of the paper, so there's some leeway in how facts are presented.
0xy 6y ago
China is not reporting accurate data, so I have no idea how you could possibly say definitively that China's numbers were less than the US on any basis. [1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-con...
- evgen 6y ago
  We are saying that China's numbers are less than the US because if they were fucking up at a level even close to what the US is going through the evidence would be clearly visible. You cannot hide millions of dead. You can hide the bodies, but not the holes in the population and social structure that comes from losing this many people. So far your only evidence is a report that their case numbers were higher than reported from six months ago. Have anything more recent?
  - 0xy 6y ago
    There's evidence that deliveries of urns to cemeteries was substantially higher than reported death counts [1], as well as gigantic drops in active subscriber counts in China's telecom providers [2]. I also vehemently disagree "the evidence would be clearly visible". History is littered with genocides on a massive scale that were successfully covered up. We still don't know exactly how many people died in the Holocaust or Holodomor, for example (estimates vary by millions). So this claim that you cannot cover up deaths is clearly false. It's also very likely the US is over-reporting numbers. For example, studies have shown US death certificates have "major errors" the majority of the time [3], and several US states have counted unrelated deaths as "COVID" deaths, including Washington State (later partially corrected) [4]. I also disagree with your claim that evidence of China's data manipulation does not count because it's 'six months old', you can't wave away evidence like that. [1] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/lines-of-urns-in-wuhan-prompt-questions-of-chinas-pandemic-death-toll https://nationalpost.com/news/world/lines-of-urns-in-wuhan-p... [2] https://www.developingtelecoms.com/telecom-business/operator-news/9361-chinese-operators-see-subscriber-numbers-drop.html https://www.developingtelecoms.com/telecom-business/operator... [3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/04/25/coronavirus-death-toll-hard-track-1-3-death-certificates-wrong/3020778001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/04/2... [4] https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/data-tables/ChangingCriteriaUsedtoReportDeathsReCOVID.pdf https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...