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Comment by zozin | Hacker News Reader

A number like that in a vacuum is absolutely meaningless. The death rate in 2020 vs. historical averages is much lower in the US compared to the UK, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, etc., but if you believe the media uncritically you'd think that America is a hellhole with people dying on the streets from Covid-19, when in fact that's just not the case. Our response was better than Europe's. We wear masks at a higher rate than other countries.

https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/17/upshot/corona...

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>> Our response was better than Europe's.

US's response to covid-19 was better than all countries in the whole of Europe?

Or, did you mean to say the US's response was better than Europe's, on average?

In what way was it better?

> but if you believe the media uncritically you'd think that America is a hellhole with people dying on the streets from Covid-19

But, in reality, they're dying in their homes because Americans are too afraid of surprise hospital fees ruining their entire life.

> Our response was better than Europe's

Americans had the brunt of the European and Chinese outbreaks to observe, learn, and listen, but none of these things come easy to us, so we instead decided to sacrifice our non-remote workers.

Also, according to the ECDC, there have so far been 179,793 total deaths in the EU [1] vs 169,870 in the US [2]. In terms of cases 1 946 748 for the EU, 5,422,242 for the US. Keep in mind the population of the EU is roughly 40% larger than the US.

We could also probably start looking into food insecurity rates increasing, eviction rates increasing, widespread civil unrest, but, hey, why throw more tinder onto the fire? The response has been exceptional, but in a brutally American way.

[1] https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea [2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/case...

"Hey Internet Stranger, here's a bunch of non-sequiturs that get to the crux of my real belief that AMERICA BAD!!! Try to prove me wrong, haha"

Could you please stop posting flamewar or political battle-style comments to HN? This is unsubstantive, baity stuff, and not what HN is for.

The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. That goes regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How high does the death rate have to be until you'd be willing to enforce stay-at-home?

Let’s start at higher than 3x the flu. And a lower average age than 78-years-old.

If we're going to pass legislation based on death rate, why don't we start with heart disease?

Heart disease kills 647k people per year, for consistency shouldn't we also mandate exercise and outlaw junk food?

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