Reality check: A look at Trumps claims on coronavirus, the U.S. economy and Biden – Globalnews.ca

If saying things 100 times could make them true, U.S. President Donald Trumps account of how the U.S. is doing with the coronavirus would be true.

COVID-19 testing would be the envy of the world, the economy would be on the cusp of roaring back, the threat would be receding in a pandemic that has sickened more than 3.1 million Americans and killed more than 133,000.

But repetition doesnt make for reality. The U.S. is taking a disproportionate hit from the coronavirus globally and does not have it under control.

A look at how rhetoric from the past week compares with the facts on various fronts:

TRUMP: For the 1/100th time, the reason we show so many Cases, compared to other countries that havent done nearly as well as we have, is that our TESTING is much bigger and better. We have tested 40,000,000 people. If we did 20,000,000 instead, Cases would be half, etc. NOT REPORTED! tweet Thursday.

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THE FACTS: His notion that infections are high only because the U.S. diagnostic testing has increased is false. His own top public health officials have shot down this line of thinking. Infections are rising because people are infecting each other more than they were when most everyone was hunkered down.

Its true that increased testing also contributes to the higher numbers. When you look harder, youre going to see more. But the testing has uncovered a worrisome trend: The percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus is on the rise across nearly the entire country.

Thats a clear demonstration that sickness is spreading and that the U.S. testing system is falling short.

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A high rate of positive tests indicates a government is only testing the sickest patients who seek out medical attention and is not casting a wide enough net, says the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, a primary source of updated information on the pandemic.

Americans are being confronted with long lines at testing sites, often disqualified if they are not showing symptoms and, if tested, forced to wait many days for results.

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TRUMP on the coronavirus: We have the lowest Mortality Rate in the World. tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: This statement is wholly unsupported.

An accurate death rate is impossible to know. Every country tests and counts people differently, and some are unreliable in reporting cases. Without knowing the true number of people who become infected, it cannot be determined what portion of them die.

Using a count kept by Johns Hopkins University, you can compare the number of recorded deaths with the number of reported cases. That count shows the U.S. experiencing more deaths as a percentage of cases than most other countries now being hit hard with the pandemic. The statistics look better for the U.S. when the list is expanded to include European countries that were slammed early on by the virus but now appear to have it under control. Even then, the U.S. is not shown to be among the best in avoiding death.

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Such calculations, though, do not provide a reliable measurement of actual death rates, because of the variations in testing and reporting, and the Johns Hopkins tally is not meant to be such a measure.

The only way to tell how many cases have gone uncounted, and therefore what percentage of infected people have died from the disease, is to do another kind of test comprehensively, of peoples blood, to find how many people bear immune system antibodies to the virus. Globally, that is only being done in select places.

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TRUMP: Deaths in the U.S. are way down. tweet Monday, one of at least a half dozen heralding a drop in daily deaths from the virus.

THE FACTS: Its true that deaths dipped even as infections spiked in many parts of the country. But deaths lag sickness and the spikes have not played out.

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Its a false narrative to take comfort in a lower rate of death, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Tuesday. He advised Americans: Dont get yourself into false complacency.