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South Central MN | I hate graphs like this. Even if the numbers are 100% accurate (everyone was tested, govt isn't manipulating data), it still doesn't mean anything to me to compare total cases from one country to another. I want to see a percentage of population infected chart. Having 50k infections in the US is far different than 50k in a monster population like China or a tiny population like Vatican City. I'd wager that Italy would much rather have our infection rate at this point in the epidemic than what their infection rate has been.
People just keep showing these total infections because 50k infected is something you can kind of visualize and is a big scary number, instead of saying that 0.015% of the US population is currently infected (50k/327.2 mill). For reference, Italy having 50k infections out of their population of 60.48mill is a rate of 0.083% - that's 5.5x higher than the US! Knowing where on a timeline the US hits 0.083% relative to Italy or China tells us whether the US is ahead or behind the curve relative to total numbers. Total numbers mean nothing. I'm not trying to downgrade the seriousness of the issue, but the numbers and comparisons that are flying around seem incredibly misleading. | |
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Coronavirus chart
