The establishment media misleads the public in its campaign to blame President Trump for COVID-19 deaths. For example, CNN’s Jake Tapper cuts Peter Navarro’s mic and tells his audience that the United States is less than 5 percent of the world population, yet has more than 20 percent of the world’s deaths from COVID-19—as if this claim settles the matter.
“Okay. Peter Navarro, thank you so much. I appreciate your time today,” says Tapper. Then, with Navarro out of the way, says, “I would just like to remind the American people watching that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, and the United States has more than 20 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths. That is a fact. It does not matter how many times he insults CNN.” CNN is an entity capable of being insulted?
This is propaganda. By telling his audience that the United States is less than 5 percent of the world’s population, by making us seem small and by assuming all countries are comparable, Tapper leaves the impression of a great disparity between the US and the world.
With 328 million people, the United States is not only the third largest country in the world (only China and India are larger), but it is the nexus of the world economy, with a high volume of international travel and densely packed cities. Moreover, many large countries with lower death rates aggressively deployed therapeutics, for example, hydroxychloroquine, in treating COVID-19 patients. Physicians in Western countries were constrained in prescribing cheap therapeutics by the actions of profit-driven medical-industrial complex, which has captured the regulatory process. And what about relevant demographics and health metrics?
With these factors in mind, let’s do a comparison between the United States and four large European countries—France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom—that have been similarly affected by COVID-19. Respectively, these countries have experienced 30,950, 35,624, 29,849, and 41,637 deaths. With a combined population of 240 million people, the four countries have experienced a combined 138 thousand deaths. The United States has experienced 194 thousand deaths.
I think you can already see how this is going to go. The percentage of deaths relative to population? The four European countries combined: 0.0575%. The United States: 0.0591%. Virtually the same. However, the percentage of deaths relative to population is even higher in Spain and the United Kingdom than in the United States. The percentage of deaths is the same for Italy and the United States. France’s relatively better numbers brings down the overall number for the four European countries. If I had left France out of the mix, the United States would have fared better in the comparison.
Why doesn’t Tapper inform the public that the United States is comparable to the four hardest hit European countries? That, in fact, the United States has a better than record than Spain and the United Kingdom? Shouldn’t news programming actually focus on informing the public? Clarifying the statistics? Contextualizing the facts? I think you know why they aren’t.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party, which is responsible for unleashing this virus on the world, is not only not the subject of news coverage in the United States, but the public is admonished for even talking about where this virus came from. It’s racist to call it the Chinese virus. The governor of New York, whose state alone experienced 32,629 death (with a population much smaller than each of the four countries I have used for the comparison), refers to the virus as the “European virus.”
Listening to the way Andrew Cuomo has been going on, Trump is to blame for the deaths in the United States. Cuomo angrily threatened Trump’s safety over a planned trip to New York. What is the percentage of deaths in Cuomo’s state? Very high. At 0.167 percent, it is also three times higher than in the four worst-faring European countries. Take the state of New York out of the statistics, and the United States fares much better. So why is the press giving Cuomo a pass? I think you know why they are.
freedom and reason 