Duelling death charts

[Riobard]

Just catching a bit of the CW (Fox News) and DJT interview as clips are folded into Trevor Noah’s Daily Show.

Not that Trump gets anything right, not defending him, but I note that Fox criticizes him for choosing a mortality chart that omits Russia (better) but includes Italy (worse) and Spain (worse).

However, Fox pulls out their own chart to make a point. It entirely omits continental Europe and, therefore, bumps USA up in the rankings! By excluding Spain, Italy, and other European nations with high mortality rates they are doing the exact same ‘cherry-picking’ manipulative move they accuse the White House of.

A smarter Trump staff would have included more European nations faring worse on lethality. That may have made Trump’s assertion a bit less embarrassing. Yet a more more honest and objective Fox production team would have included ANY European nations as mortality comparators. In fact, those are likely more accurate and reflective of the norms of fatality to date because mortality further in the trajectory of incidence has caught up to morbidity and yielded an overall recovery:death ratio. 

I mean, I’m not upset that they appear to score one in his net but I despise shady journalism. 

[Latbear4blk]

I should watch he clip again. In my memory, the point CW was making was that the mortality rate in the USA was far for being the best (the lowest), and the point Fox was making by bringing both charts was that the White House' graphic was also supporting CW's point. The included/excluded countries was a secondary point.

[Riobard]

1 hour ago, Latbear4blk said:

I should watch he clip again. In my memory, the point CW was making was that the mortality rate in the USA was far for being the best (the lowest), and the point Fox was making by bringing both charts was that the White House' graphic was also supporting CW's point. The included/excluded countries was a secondary point ....

I agree the intention was to illustrate Trump’s assertion was false. But the news channel resorted to the same visual bias by putting USA ranked third (or close to 3rd, I am pretty sure).

[I could only write outside the quote box in ‘edit’ format for some weird reason, and now cannot seem to rectify it]

Edited July 22, 2020 by Riobard

[Riobard]

Actually, a smarter Trump with a more skilled consult team could have backed up his claim and done it in a fairly incontrovertible manner. 

No region has better attempted to estimate a truer mortality rate than New York, and that could be reasonably extrapolated broadly in the USA since rising prevalence elsewhere justifies New York as a comparator. Other jurisdictions are trying to do this but are lagging behind large-scale representative antibody assessment as a surrogate marker of disease prevalence. 

Researchers in New York vastly inflated mortality by adding both probable CoV deaths and a proportion of excess deaths (year-to-year period referencing) reasonably attributable to CoV. That makes USA potentially look worse than currently. However, researchers during May peak also antibody-tested 15,000 people, finding a 12% state prevalence and 20% NYC prevalence. That drastically alters (reduces) mortality to a little more than 1% because the denominator reflects a much larger absolute number of presumed recoveries (deaths of course factored into both numerator and denominator). 

This ascertainment bias adjustment could put all global regions in a better light but I think the assertion that USA has a relatively low (lowest-ish) death rate could have been one pulled over on Wallace. I doubt he grasps the more advanced mortality algorithm any better than his interview opponent.

Trump lost his prime-time shot to convincingly reduce the mortality rate to at least 25% of the current figures, as reflected in the graphs, thus dropping USA death rate to the bottom of the global pack; to boast about the sophisticated way in which he assesses mortality (without under-counting deaths absent an official diagnosis!); and to offset to some degree, particularly with his naïve base, the alarm created by rising case incidence by significantly and accurately adjusting the ratio of CoV mortality to overall crude mortality. 

In reality, the USA reported mortality rate is about the same as globally, with many countries reporting better or worse than the global average. There is lacking a standardized method for calculating this metric. 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Riobard
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