Did you all see that Trump has no idea of what "per capita" means? Unbelievable!
THE PRESIDENT: But when you do 14 million tests, you’re going to find more cases. If instead of 14 million tests we did 3 million — like, Germany is at about 3 million; South Korea is at 3 million, and they’ve done a very good job. It’s not a knock, but we’re at almost 14 million. We’re going to be passing 14 million very soon.
So you’re going to have more tests. If we do 3 million, everyone would say, “Oh, we’re doing great,” you know, in terms of cases. We’re going to have more cases. If we did 3 million — maybe that’s what we should’ve done. I said — if I would’ve done 3 million, they’d say, “Oh, they have very few cases. United States is doing well.”
We’re finding a lot of people. By doing testing, you’re finding people. So we’re doing 14, Germany is doing 3, South Korea doing 3, and I think they’re number two and three. So we’re way ahead of everybody. But when you do that, you have more cases. So a lot of times, the fake news media will say, “You know, there are a lot of cases in the United States.” Well, if we didn’t do testing at a level that nobody has ever dreamt possible, you wouldn’t have very many cases.
So we’re finding a lot of cases, and we’re doing a great job once we find them.
Okay, thank you very much.
Q (Inaudible) follow up. How does it compare to a per capita basis? Obviously, the United States is much larger than a lot of these Europeans countries.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q How does our testing compare per capita —
THE PRESIDENT: Sure.
Q — to those nations?
THE PRESIDENT: You want to do that, Deborah?
DR. BIRX: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: Per capita.
DR. BIRX: Yeah, our — you know, our testing now, we’re almost up to 4 percent. So some of the state — some of the European countries are at 4 to 5 percent. And I think our goal is to ensure that we can find the asymptomatics. And I think that’s really our focus right now, working with every state to really help them identify where these clusters came from historically, and then proactively going for those clusters, identifying them early, and finding the asymptomatic individuals before. And no one is intending to spread the virus. I always want to be very clear about that. Asymptomatic patient — people don’t know they’re infected. And so, together, we’re really working to find them.
And I think it’s a — it’s a unique challenge, and I think together we’re really making progress.
THE PRESIDENT: And, you know, when you say “per capita,” there’s many per capitas. It’s, like, per capita relative to what? But you can look at just about any category, and we’re really at the top, meaning positive on a per capita basis, too. They’ve done a great job.
C'mon.
He went to Fordham and then to Wharton. Why would you expect him to know such a complicated term?
Word salad.
He's very defensive on the testing, always has been. It sounds so much better to say the US has conducted over 14 million tests rather than saying we've tested 4.5% of our population. 14 million is a nice big number that he can brag about.
Sources site data per capita, per 1000, per 1 million, and then they compare it to tests vs cases and so on.
In the per million people category the US has tested 44,587...more than countries like Germany, Canada and France. But fewer than countries like Spain, Italy and Russia.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104645/covid19-testing-rate-select-countries-worldwide/
Some more data here:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-cumulative-total-tests-per-thousand?country=ITA~ZAF~KOR~USA~CAN
Like everything with Trump, it all turns into a competition between him and the press.
Like everything with Trump, it all turns into a competition between him and the press.
You've encapsulated his entire personality. He likes to win. Everything is a competition. He one-ups generals, doctors, career intelligence officers, experts of any kind, & women. In his mind, he always wins. When he actually doesn't win, he won't admit it, he pivots. And he always has the last word. "There's many per capitas."
I posted this once before, but I thought this article about Trump's early religious training at Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking Presbyterian church could explain a lot. He was taught that failure simply isn't an option. Even thinking of failure is wrong according to Peale & Trump claims to be Peale's "best pupil." Maybe he is.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/politics/trump-magical-thinking-peale-coronavirus/index.html
I've no idea whether this is true beyond the facts that as an adult, he attended that church sporadically & was married to Wife #1 there. It makes some sense of who he is. It's an alternative to thinking of him in psychiatric terms like narcissist or delusional.
Some goon could jump out of an alley and pummel Trump's face. In his story, he severely bruised his attackers hands by banging his face against them.
Some goon could jump out of an alley and pummel Trump's face.
I wish someone would.
Like everything with Trump, it all turns into a competition between him and the press.
You've encapsulated his entire personality. He likes to win. Everything is a competition. He one-ups generals, doctors, career intelligence officers, experts of any kind, & women. In his mind, he always wins. When he actually doesn't win, he won't admit it, he pivots. And he always has the last word. "There's many per capitas."
I posted this once before, but I thought this article about Trump's early religious training at Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking Presbyterian church could explain a lot. He was taught that failure simply isn't an option. Even thinking of failure is wrong according to Peale & Trump claims to be Peale's "best pupil." Maybe he is.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/politics/trump-magical-thinking-peale-coronavirus/index.html
I've no idea whether this is true beyond the facts that as an adult, he attended that church sporadically & was married to Wife #1 there. It makes some sense of who he is. It's an alternative to thinking of him in psychiatric terms like narcissist or delusional.
I skipped over your first post on this, just didn't feel I needed another article trying to explain why Trump is who he is.
Having read the linked story here, I can't agree more. It explains a lot.
I skipped over your first post on this, just didn't feel I needed another article trying to explain why Trump is who he is.
Having read the linked story here, I can't agree more. It explains a lot.
I'd never read anything that tried to explain him. I knew a group of psychiatrists sent a letter to a Congressional committee before the inauguration warning that he shouldn't be allowed to take office because he was mentally unfit. I never gave it any thought until this article.
