Robert Reich tells us the following:
By contrast, the United States — with the highest death rate and most haphazard response to Covid-19 of any advanced nation —
That “highest death rate” is not correct. A rate is closely allied to the concept of a percentage or, a portion of. That is, it takes account of the size of the population under discussion.
That rate can be measured in two ways. Firstly, as the percentage of known cases that have resulted in death:
Or we can look at mortality per 100,000 of population:
In neither case is the US the worst of anything.
So, you know, ignorance or casuistry, difficult to know with Robert Reich really.
Robert Reich (Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor) is a confidence artist, and this is a confidence game, like his assertion (repeated by Speaker Pelosi) that unemployment compensation is the very best way to stimulate the economy. The “death rate” he is referring to here is deaths per nation.
The US probably has the highest number of survivors of any nation and by Reich’s logic must be a roaring success.
If Hills was president, that’s _exactly_ the metric he would be touting. But Orange Man Bad.
As they say on Instapundit: Embrace the healing power of “and”.
And take out the stats for New York and the USA goes to the bottom and New York considered as a separate Country goes to the top.
This sort idiocy would be disturbing in a recently released psychiatric patient, that it comes from one such as Reich is terrifying. In my “country” of residence, I say that in inverted commas as it is an unrecognised (but easily recognisable) state, there have been 964 identified cases and 37 deaths, equating to about 2000 cases and 74 deaths per million. Not so so bad, especially in light of the fact that the response here has been incredibly haphazard, far more so than in the USA, there is a lock down but it is much ignored, social gatherings continue and… Read more »
Reich is ignorant of history, politics and economics. He may be a knitting guru but he’s not proved it.