The most affected country
Yesterday, at lunch, I listened absently to the Gr on Radio3.
"The pandemic in the world is killing over 150,000. 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: 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 slaughter by an irresponsible leader …
The forecast of 65,000 deaths is staggering: we painfully over 23,000, and, unfortunately, Spain is catching up with us at a great pace.
But…
As plausible as it may be, and certainly interesting, in its own way, since it cannot be compared with an actual data, I got the curiosity to go and look for the latter where I knew I could find it: at Johns Hopkins University . Now, this is how it is: in the US the victims so far are 38,664. So, according to Trump, there will be nearly a doubling before the epidemic ends. Let's hope it doesn't get worse. In Spain so far 20,043, in Italy 23,227 (yesterday's data).
Oh yes: the US is the country that has counted the most victims, therefore the most affected …
Well …
I remind myself that the USA 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 they are 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 (double what Trump thinks it will take).
I'll be clearer.
I understood that it is still necessary to convey the idea that #hastatoTrump , but describing as the "most affected" country the one where there have been more deaths simply because there are many, many more inhabitants (to be precise: over fivefold) is certainly correct (sure, there were more deaths!) but … does it help us understand?
In my opinion not, and in fact I don't understand the media. For example, I'm still trying to understand that " like in 1977 " unemployment rate story, not to mention the various inflation spiking in the 1990s 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.