The country most affected
Yesterday, at lunch, I listened absently to the Gr on Radio3.
"The pandemic in the world has more than 150,000 victims. The United States is the most affected country. President Trump is accused by democratic governors of fomenting protests against the lockdown. The White House reassures us that we will have 65,000 deaths, better than expected. In Spain exceeded the 20,000 dead, in the UK over 14,000 victims. "
(my memory is poor, but you can find the podcast here ).
In short, #hastatoTrump, but this, by now, you know, would hardly be worth saying. Eh, poor Americans, sent to the slaughterhouse by an irresponsible leader …
The prediction of 65,000 deaths is impressive: we painfully over 23,000, and, unfortunately, Spain is catching up with us.
But…
As plausible as it may be, and certainly interesting, in its own way, since it cannot be compared with an actual fact, I got the curiosity to go and look for the latter where I knew I could find it: at Johns Hopkins University . Now, that's the way it is: 38,664 victims in the US so far. So, according to Trump, there will be almost a doubling before the end of the epidemic. Let's hope it doesn't get worse. In Spain so far 20,043, in Italy 23,227 (yesterday's data).
Eh, yes: the United States is the country that has counted the most victims, therefore the most affected …
Well …
I remind myself that the US has 329,311,764 inhabitants, Italy 60,359,546 inhabitants, Spain 47,198,000. And so the victims are so far: 0.01% of the US population, 0.04% of the Italian population and 0.04% of the Spanish population. I mean are they few? Absolutely not. It is a catastrophe of undeniable proportions. I mean that if and when the US is hit like Italy and Spain, its victims will reach 329.311.764 x 0.0004 = 131.725 (twice where it believes Trump will arrive).
I will be more clear.
I understood that it is still necessary to convey the idea that #hastatoTrump , but to describe as the "hardest hit" country where there have been the most deaths simply because there are many but many more inhabitants (to be precise: more than five times) is certainly correct (sure, there were more deaths!) but … does it help us understand?
In my opinion, no, and in fact I don't understand the media. For example, I'm still trying to understand that unemployment rate story " like in 1977 ", not to mention the various inflation that spur in the 90s and the like …
I think I will die without understanding it, but at least, since I am in a "less affected" country, also because the contagion here was impossible ( the holders of the "double-digit" truth told me), I am reasonably sure that I am not die of coronavirus.
Be cautious and, above all, patient, because it takes a lot of patience but a lot, a lot …
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2020/04/il-paese-piu-colpito.html on Sun, 19 Apr 2020 15:46:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.