Journalism: “U.S. had more COVID cases this month than most countries had all year”

Journalism: “U.S. had more COVID cases this month than most countries had all year”

CBS News thinks this headline news story is profound. No, its stupidity on display: U.S. had more COVID cases this month than most countries had all year

Absolute idiocy.

The U.S. is the 3rd most populated country in the world after China, and then India. There are 195 defined countries in the world, meaning 192 countries are smaller than the U.S., mostly a LOT smaller.

Indeed, 3/4ths of them are smaller than 1/12th (or one month records) of the U.S. population.

In addition to the population of each country, there are significant differences in demographics that appear to impact how many people get sick in each region, plus how many people have access to being “tested”.

If you are sick, but live where there is little testing, you don’t count. The U.S. has reported nearly 200 million test results. Some areas report one positive result per patient even when testing positive more than once – while others report every positive test, such as a hospital patient tested daily for a week – the total test counts are sort of meaningless.

The only useful test metric is to compare the positive test counts per 1 million population.

This is the first time in history that we count every case with a “test”. When I was young, I had measles, mumps and chicken pox. The diagnosis was made by the doctor on the basis of signs and symptoms. Today, this diagnosis no longer “counts” because it was not confirmed by a test.

In fact, my past diagnosis is not “official” – in order to travel outside the US, I now need a $110 test to verify that I had measles. Interestingly, while they can vaccinate adults, they apparently cannot vaccinate us if we previously had the disease.

Anyway, CBS news reporters are apparently either stupid or think we are stupid. Either way, its not a good look.

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