LogFAQs > #936566927

EvilMegas posted...

Both of those things. If it's more deadly than China is letting on, we need to know.

It doesn't really matter what the exact mortality rate is. We know for certain that it's high enough that we need to keep it in check, which is a challenge because of how rapidly we're able to see it spreading in the dozens of countries with detailed, reliable data. Is there potential to hold China accountable for deaths that have resulted from underestimating this thing? Absolutely. But that's not going to happen for a long while yet, and it certainly won't happen if people keep underestimating it despite the information that's now readily available (since China can't be blamed for that).

Philip027 posted...

Yeah, how dare people talk about the comparison of US's numbers vs China's numbers (and the legitimacy of China's numbers) in a topic titled "US death toll surpasses China's"

Yes, it is indeed wrong to focus on pointless trivia over useful information in discussing something with significant real-world impact. It will never matter whether the US' numbers are greater than or less than China's, real or imagined. The only thing rankings like that can tell us is who to emulate moving forward, and nobody is ever going to consider China to be a legitimate candidate there. Raw numbers are also pretty useless, given that populations and population densities vary so much. The trajectory of case numbers is more valuable, since that indicates who's managing to slow things down and who isn't.

Quite simply, saying the US death toll has surpassed China's just contextualizes the number that's being presented to give it a rough sense of scale. It's not a comparison that has any useful semantic value, meaning dithering over the comparison's accuracy is foolish.

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