H/T to Guavaboy who suggested a new title
When confronted with facts, Donald Trump frequently responds with wildly unsubstantiated claims that won’t stand up to scrutiny. Too often the news media lets him get away with it. As an example, when the COVID-19 death count in America reached 200,000. From Bloomberg Trump said:
He claimed that his actions prevented 2.5 million deaths from taking place, “if we didn’t do it properly”. Then he pivoted to blaming China’s actions for the pandemic.
My counterclaim, basic arithmetic and simple logic fully makes Trump’s claim complete nonsense.
So, at 2.98% against the worldwide death rate of 3.125%, rounding errors or reporting deficiencies, or perhaps slightly improved care can account for a statistically insignificant difference in death rates between the USA and the rest of the world.
Just this week, the world passed 32 million COVID-19 cases, and 1 million deaths. Some basic arithmetic yields the death rates worldwide and in the USA recorded in the previous paragraph.
A closer examination of the numbers shows that the United States accounts for 4 per cent of the world’s population, yet we account for 22 per cent of the world’s cases and 20.6 per cent of the world’s COVID-19 deaths.
Where would we be if we only had 4 per cent of the world’s cases?
Considering 32 million cases worldwide, and if America had 4 per cent of the world’s cases and deaths, America would account for 960,000 cases and 28,800 deaths based on a 3 per cent death rate. A fairly good estimate of excess American COVID-19 deaths, based on if, our national response had mirrored the response of the rest of the developed world, for instance, Spain, Italy, Germany, South Korea, the UK, Canada and others, and our cases matched our population per cent, or 4 per cent of the world’s cases and deaths. That leads to a simple calculation of 205,000 — 28,800 = 176,200.
So, had America behaved like a “normal” industrialized country, we may have avoided as many as 176,200 excess COVID-19 deaths.
By normal, I mean that our national leadership 1) recognized the problem and the severity of the disease and its transmissibility. 2) our national leadership planned, and executed a plan to limit transmissibility, implemented adequate test protocols, implemented adequate tracing and isolation procedures, and continued to monitor and work to prevent the spread of the disease, while helping in a worldwide effort to research, test and prove the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
Of course, according to Bob Woodward’s book RAGE, President Donald Trump knew of both the severity and ease of transmission in early February of 2020, yet he and his administration failed to implement commonsense protective measures that nations all around the world did implement. America became the nation that other nations won’t visit their countries because we represent nearly the biggest risk in the world for COVID-19 transmission. This is what our president earned America. We are an international pariah.
So, the above discussion was accomplished with basic arithmetic that every child on Earth knows how to do by the time they are in the eight grade, or likely the fifth grade. Anyone can figure this out.
We should look at HERD IMMUNITY.
Our current leader of the president’s COVID-19 Task Force is fond of saying what we need to do is to get to a state of HERD IMMUNITY, which significantly reduces the ability to transmit a virus once about 75 per cent of a population has had a viral disease, and three fourths of the population is immune because they have had an immune response to either having had the disease, or had been vaccinated against it. Sounds pretty good, if you have a vaccine, and if you have over 660 million doses to administer to a population of 330 million Americans.
I want to digress to Trump’s claim that his actions (really inactions) likely saved 2.5 million lives from COVID-19. Look at the reality. In the entire world, with a 3 per cent death rate, from 32 million cases, one million people have died from COVID-19. Just that fact alone gives the lie to a claim that 2.5 million American lives were saved. What would it take to get to 2.5 million deaths, assuming the 3 per cent death rate from cases? Again, simple arithmetic shows that America would need to have 83.3 million COVID-19 cases to reach 2.5 million deaths. More evidence that Trump’s claim is outlandish and simply wrong and a diversion from the awful truth of his failure to lead our nation and to a great degree, the world. World leadership is one of the jobs that is always expected of the American president. Ours failed.
This starts to look like the path to HERD IMMUNITY.
America has 330 million people, and it has been generally stated by immunologists that it takes about 75 per cent of a population having a viral disease to provide enough antibodies in those 75 per cent of the people go reach HERD IMMUNITY. Well, 75 per cent of 330 million is 247.5 million people, or three times the 83.3 million it took to get to 2.5 million COVID-19 deaths. So, assuming the constant 3 per cent death rate from 247.5 million people getting the disease, it calculates out to 7,425,000 or Seven Million, four hundred twenty-five thousand deaths from COVID-19 in the absence of a vaccine.
The current state of matters is that we do not have a fully evaluated, fully patient trial evaluated, vaccine, yet we have leaders in our nation still advocating for HERD IMMUNITY, including the head of the President’s COVID-19 Task Force, despite the advice from the true infectious disease specialists in the CDC and other agencies whose actual job is to protect America from pandemics. The Governor of Florida is another who is OK to try to get to HERD IMMUNITY. How is Sweden doing with HERD IMMUNITY?
Is Trump’s October Surprise an announcement of a COVID-19 vaccine? Would you use it? Would you let your children use a vaccine that had corners cut in its development, evaluation process? Don’t bet your life on it.
I have invested about three hours in this thought experiment, and I think it completely blows up Trump’s comment from September 19th. I believe nothing he says, but maybe someone else can read this and agree with me. If you read it, I’m really happy.