In an interview with HBO’s Axios broadcast Monday night, President Donald Trump misunderstood the COVID-19 U.S. mortality rate. And he underestimated the maximum mortality rate relative to the U.S. population.
During the interview, filmed on July 28, Axios journalist Jonathan Swan referred to the recent outbreak of COVID-19-related deaths in the United States, noting that at the time of the interview’s recording, the United States reported more than 1,000 deaths consistent with son.s. Day.
The president rejected Swan’s statement, referring to the graphics he had with him and saying, “Right here, America is the lowest in many categories, we are inferior to the world, we are inferior to Europe.”
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When asked what he meant by “lowest in the world,” the president introduced Swan to his image, revealing that he was referring to the U.S. mortality rate. In proportion to the number of COVID-19 cases shown, than to the proportional mortality rate. U.S. Population
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Population (CDC) defines the “mortality rate” as “a measure of the frequency of death in an explained population” during an express time. According to the PolitiFact non-profit data verification task, the mortality rate shows how “common” a user is to die for COVID-19 in a given population, such as in the United States, while the number of deaths is proportional to the number of instances that shows how likely a user is likely to die from COVID-19 once they have already been infected.
On Tuesday morning, among the top 20 countries affected by COVID-19 in the world, the United States has the fourth highest number of COVID-19 deaths consisting of one hundred thousand inhabitants, only the United Kingdom, Peru and Chile, according to Johns Hopkins University. Meanwhile, the number of deaths in the United States consistent with one hundred instances shown (their case-case ratio observed) is number 14 among the top 20 affected countries through COVID-19, through JHU, but is still higher than Chile, India, Argentina. , Russia, South Africa and Bangladesh.
The number of COVID-19s in the United States increased considerably in July amid widespread reopening measures criticized by experts as premature. The more cases cannot be attributed to a greater number of tests, as it also increases the number of positive tests. According to a TIME analysis, COVID-19-related deaths in the United States have increased to 19.8% in the 14 days following Tuesday morning.
During Axios’ interview on HBO, Swan rejected Trump’s characterization of the U.S. mortality rate:
Swan: “I’m talking about death as a proportion of the [American] population. That’s where America is wrong. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”
Trump: “You can’t do that. You have to go through the cases … What that says is when you have – where there’s a case, the other people who live off those cases.”
Swan: “It is an applicable statistic to say” if the United States has X population and X of that population’s deaths,” compared to South Korea.
Trump: “No, because you have to pass the cases–“
Swan: “Look at South Korea, for example. Fifty-one million people. Three hundred dead.”
Trump: “You don’t know.”
Swan: “Do you think they’re manipulating their statistics? South Korea?”
Trump: “I’m not going to go through because I have a very smart date with the country, but you don’t know, and they have spikes.”
Trump then showed Swan another graphic that gave the impression of showing the COVID-19 mortality rate in the United States in proportion to the number of cases, and continued:
Trump: “We are the last, we are the first, we have the best”
Swan: “A thousand Americans die every day. But I sense that in some cases it’s different.”
Trump: “No, you still don’t report it, Jonathan.
Swan: “Yes, we do tests-“
Trump: “Well, don’t we have credits for that? And because we do more tests, we have more cases.”
(Experts say that accumulation in the tests takes into account accumulation in cases.)
In the same interview with Swan, President Trump also spoke about civil rights icon and Democratic rep. John Lewis, who died on July 17 at the age of 80 of pancreatic cancer.
When asked what he thinks the congressman’s story will look like, Trump replied: “I don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis, he chose not to come to my inauguration. I’ve never met John Lewis, in fact, I don’t think so.” . »
Swan then asked if Trump discovered the awesome civil rights leader. Trump replied: “I can’t say one way or another. I think it’s impressive to a lot of other people. I think a lot of other people aren’t awesome.”
“He didn’t come to my endowment. He didn’t come to my speech on the state of union. And that’s good, it’s his right,” Trump continued, adding, “No one has done more for black Americans than I am.”
Lewis was chairman of the Nonviolent Student Coordination Committee, one of the organizers of the 1963 march in Washington and led the 1965 Selma march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where he was attacked and beaten by police.
When asked through Swan if he discovered that the history of civil rights leaders was impressive, Trump said, “He’s a user who entrusts a lot of power and a lot of center to civil rights, but there are also many others.”
Trump said he would “have no objections” in renaming the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma for Lewis.
You can watch the full interview with Axios here.