What The Media Isn't Telling You About The United States' Coronavirus Case Numbers

What The Media Isn't Telling You About The United States' Coronavirus Case Numbers

 

BY MATT MARGOLIS 

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Briefing Room, Thursday, March 26, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

When President Trump said this week that the United States had done more testing than South Korea, USA Today was quick to fact-check his claim by pointing out, "The United States population is more than six times the size of South Korea’s. On a per capita basis, South Korea is testing far more of its citizens than the U.S." In this case, the media attempted to use a per capita comparison against Trump. CNN and MSNBC each made similar fact-checks.

On Thursday, the New York Times made a big fuss over the fact that more than 81,321 Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, which is "more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen."

According to their report, the United States, following "a series of missteps" is now "the epicenter of the pandemic."

But, is it really?

China's confirmed cases topped out at around 80,000, but, as PJM's Victoria Taft noted, China reportedly stopped conducting tests in order to show the world they've contained the spread of the virus. So, comparing any country to China at this point is useless, but why wasn't the case numbers adjusted to show them on a per capita basis, the same way the media pounced on Trump about testing?

Well, let's take a look and see why.

Here are the top six countries by confirmed cases (based on the case numbers from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University as of 2:30 pm ET March 27) in descending order:

1. USA (94,238)
2. Italy (86,498)
3. Spain (64,059)
4. Germany (49,344)
5. Iran (32,332)
6. France (29,593)

Now, here are the top six countries by confirmed cases per million people (based on population numbers from the CIA World Fact Book) in descending order:

1. Italy (1386.13)
2. Spain (1280.78)
3. Germany (615.57)
4. France (436.17)
5. Iran (380.72)
6. USA (283.30)

Well, isn't that interesting? The United States' confirmed cases per capita is the lowest of the top six countries affected by the virus. Now, there are some who would argue that the United States testing lags behind that of other countries. If we want to assume that there is a discrepancy in testing between countries and that selection bias in testing undercounts the infection rate, then the number of coronavirus deaths is a more accurate way of measuring the impact of the pandemic in each country. So, let's look at total confirmed deaths in descending order.

1. Italy (9,134)
2. Spain (4,934)
3. Iran (2,378)
4. France (1,698)
5. USA (1,438)
6. Germany (304)

Germany looks pretty good compared to everyone else, doesn't it? But, let's look at confirmed deaths per million people in descending order, to see how that changes things:

1. Italy (146.37)
2. Spain (98.65)
3. Iran (28.00)
4. France (25.03)
5. USA (4.32)
6. Germany (3.79)

Interesting indeed! Germany and the United States have significantly better coronavirus death rates per capita than Italy, Spain, Iran and France. A lot better. This is why the media avoids per capita measurements for confirmed cases, but conveniently remembered when it wanted to fact check Trump's testing numbers.

The media wants you to believe that the coronavirus in the United States is spiraling out of control the way it did in Italy. Fact check: it isn't.

Note: You can view the data used for this post here.

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