by Tom Kando As the covid-19 pandemic was starting to affect the US half a year ago, the idiots on the right began to politicize the issue right away. Responding to my article Mother Nature? (March 23, 2020), an anonymous reader wrote the following:
Thank you President Trump for acting rapidly in blocking European flights!”
He added: “Contrary to your assertion, the death stats show that Western Europe remains the epicenter of the Coronavirus, every other stat is just a question of who measures the most. Besides, when our summer becomes the southern hemisphere’s winter, the southern hemisphere will become the epicenter. While I recognize we all have a problem, my previous point was to show statistically that we have more competent executive branch leadership (reacting faster and minimizing loss) than the other European democracies, and that I personally am grateful that Trump is president rather than the senile idiot the democrats are about to nominate. I would also point out that while Italy by far appears to be the most incompetent and ill prepared of the European nations, at the same time New York which has almost 50% of our Corona cases is ironically led by two Italians named Cuomo and DeBlasio!"
Now for an update. I am sad to say that half a year later, anonymous turns out to be spectacularly wrong (something which most physicians and other reasonable people could have predicted). The table below provides international stats as of Sept. 26:
|
Country |
Cases per million |
Deaths per million |
|
US |
21,986 |
631 |
|
Spain |
15,723 |
668 |
|
Belgium |
9,923 |
860 |
|
Sweden |
8,990 |
581 |
|
France |
8,076 |
485 |
|
Ireland |
6,981 |
364 |
|
Netherlands |
6,336 |
371 |
|
UK |
6,316 |
617 |
|
Switzerland |
5,982 |
238 |
|
Italy |
5,098 |
238 |
|
Austria |
4,681 |
87 |
|
Denmark |
4,522 |
112 |
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
The US is clearly the champion as far as community spread is concerned. We are also among the world’s top countries in terms of deaths per million. But most people already know this. Most of us also know that much of the blame for this lies with the president and his Republican sycophants, who have pooh-poohed, mismanaged and politicized the pandemic from the get-go.
So let’s compare the spread of the disease in red states and blue states:
Of the 51 jurisdictions
(including D.C.), 23 states are
identified as red and 19 as blue (the
remainder are ambiguous):
(https://www.270towin.com/content/blue-and-red-states)
I ranked all 51 jurisdictions
in terms of cases per million, from highest to lowest. Results:
Cases per million, ranked from high to low:
Red States (23): Blue
States (19):
1. Louisiana 14.
New York
2. Florida 16
New jersey
3. Mississippi 17.
Rhode Island
4. Alabama 18.
Illinois
5. Arizona 22.
District of Columbia
6. Georgia 24.
Delaware
7. South Carolina 25.
California
8. Tennessee 27.
Maryland
10. Arkansas 30.
Wisconsin
11. North Dakota 31.
Massachusetts
12. Texas 34.
Minnesota
15. South Dakota 35.
Connecticut
19. Idaho 38.
Michigan
20. Nebraska 40
Pennsylvania
21. Utah 42.
Washington
23. Oklahoma 46
Hawaii
26. Missouri 48.
Oregon
28. Kansas 50.
Maine
36. Kentucky 51.
Vermont
43. Montana
44. Alaska
45. Wyoming
47. West Virginia
The top 8 states with the highest relative amount of infection are all red. In general, red states are doing a much worse job at controlling the pandemic Example: Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis is re-opening all businesses, just as Florida’s counts are skyrocketing.
The Trumpites have politicized the pandemic from the start, deriding the wearing of masks, etc. And as it has been said innumerable times, the corona virus doesn’t distinguish between Democrats and Republicans.
But my point is that two can play the game. This game becomes especially heinous when people, like anonymous above, stoop to racist insults, as when he blames Italians. I don’t think Americans want to start pointing fingers at various nationalities, now that they own the plague’s epicenter, now that the table is turned and Europe no longer admits American visitors.
Do you still want to talk about “idiot Democrats” and “incompetent Italians” in Italy and “incompetent Italian-Americans” in New York?
Right now, I would much rather travel to Italy or to New York than to Texas, Florida, or any other Republican state.
Okay, so this is a tit for a tat. I am politicizing the pandemic. But hey, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
© Tom Kando 2020;All Rights Reserved
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11 comments:
I guess he is a Trump supporter
Are you sure?
We are infested with blind, deaf and dumb who are too stupid to recognize the obvious, particularly after the tantrum display of last night...but their “facts” come from FOX, ...so it goes..
Right.
And true believers/cultists never change their mind. Classic research such as Leon Festinger's When Prophecy Fails, and tragedies such as the mass suicide of Jim Jones' followers in Guyana, show that facts are irrelevant to such people. In fact, they often double down when confronted by facts that contradict their beliefs...
Sorry, I didn’t get around to reading your article until today, thus the delay in responding. Contrary to your thesis I think I have been proven spectacularly correct in my previous comments.
A) Your state case count comparison is meaningless. Deaths are what count, not cases (if case count is your criteria, then the most incompetent administration in history is the Obama/Biden administration’s handling of the N1H1 Swine flu in 2009 with 60+ million cases but only 15k deaths). As such, using deaths per million, the incompetence of Democratic leadership continues as shown with seven states in the top ten (data as of Oct 9, 2020 using your source https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ :
1) New Jersey (D) 1271 per million
2) New York (D) 1715
3) Mass (R) 1389
4) Connecticut (D) 1271
5) Louisiana (D) 1212
6) Rhode Island (D) 1067
7) Mississippi (R) 1035
8) District of Columbia (D) 898
9) Arizona (R) 789
10) Illinois (D) 725
Of particular note is the fact that the four largest Republican governed states :Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina are not in the top ten.
B) Also, as I predicted, the Southern Hemisphere became the epicenter with Peru currently at 992 deaths per million, Bolivia 694, Brazil 690, Chile 682, Ecuador 661, Mexico 633, and Columbia 526.
Correction: New Jersey is 1833 per million
I might also point out that since 40+ percent of the the US is now BIPOC, if we were to do a "apples to apples" comparison with Europe on deaths per million between European Americans and Europeans, we would look much better.
Sorry, I should edit these before I send, the previous should read : "...we would look much better, thanks again to President Trump".
Anonymous brings up many points, and makes many mistakes.
1. People on the right, like you, bring up the 2009 Swine flu a lot lately. The comparison is ill-advised, as Covid-19 is far from having run its course, yet. So far, it has killed about 13 times as many people as the Swine flu ever did, many of these thanks to Donald Trump, and a number which will quadruple before it’s over...
2. Death rates of Red states vs. Blue states: True, the blue states currently have a slightly higher cumulative death rate. But this is due to the huge “backlog” from March and April in N.Y., N.J., Conn. Mass., etc. Now, the red states are catching up fast, alas. (Louisiana is a red state, by the way, not blue). Texas, Florida and Georgia rank quite high, too (#12,13 and #18), much higher than California (#27).
3. Regarding Countries and hemispheres: Okay, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Ecuador have a slightly higher death rate than the US. Mexico (which is not in the Southern Hemisphere, by the way) and Columbia are still below us. But the US is most definitely among the top ten or so contenders. And what does it say about us, that we have to vie with poor Third World countries for this distinction? American exceptionalism, my foot.
4. “Apples to apples”? What is it with people like you, and race? You practice identity politics every bit as much as the left does. Is the death of BIPOC people to be counted/handled differently than that of people of European descent? A country’s high death rate is a high death rate, period, and it’s incumbent on that country to reduce it. Or do you favor some sort of apartheid for the US, with different standards and expectations for people of color and the rest of us?
Tom, allow me to correct your misinterpretations of my “mistakes”:
1) 2009 Swine Flu: I did not bring up the issue of the Swine Flu as a direct comparison to the results of the ChiCom Virus. I raised it by way of example to show the statistical meaninglessness and irrelevance of your performing a state by state comparison of the case count when the death count per million is the only relevant statistic.
2) Are Democrat governors INCOMPETENT or EVIL? I did not compare death rates of Red States vs Blue States. I compared Democrat governed states vs Republican governed states. Initially, I attempted to show that Democrat governors were incompetent since they governed more than two thirds of the 10 states with the highest death rates. However, I’m now convinced that Democrat governors are not necessarily incompetent as much as they are just plain EVIL. The fact that 3 of the 5 largest Democrat governed states (New York, Illinois, and Michigan) are in the top 10 of death rates, while none of the five largest Republican governed states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina) appear in the top 10, is an argument to be made for Democrat incompetence. BUT the fact that the five largest Republican governed states have unemployment rates of 1) Texas 6.8%, 2) Florida 7.4%, 3) Ohio 8.9%, 4) Georgia 5.6%, and 5) North Carolina 6.5%, while the five largest Democrat governed states have unemployment rates of 1) California 11.4%, 2) New York 12.5%, 3) Pennsylvania 10.3%, 4) Illinois 11.0%, and 5) Michigan 8.7% is prima facie evidence that the five largest Democrat governed states are deliberately tanking their economies in the hopes that Trump will be blamed. They are deliberately making their constituents suffer in the hopes of a political victory. That is EVIL! (Source: Bureau of Labor statistics for August 2020)
3) Countries and Hemispheres – I don’t care about the Southern Hemisphere counts. My point was that you were wrong in asserting that I was “spectacularly wrong” in my predictions, I was spectacularly right is predicting a epicenter transfer to the Southern Hemisphere.
4) “What is it with people like you, and race? “ - I notice that Lefties generally use racial disparity statistics to incite racial division, in essence to pull away at the threads of a common American culture that binds us together. I chose to use racial statistics as a means of providing clarity in examining differences in the various states of nature; it is by no means a statement of preference for one state versus another. It is not a value judgement as you imply.
Tom, I note that Don G. did not give this essay a glowing review like your other. Hmmm, I wonder why?
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