Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Trump's Big Lie: "US Has Given More Tests Than The Rest Of The World Combined"

Donald Trump has claimed for the last four weeks that the United States has administered more coronavirus tests than the rest of the world combined.

It's a lie. It's not even close to being true.

First, here is a sampling of Trump's incorrect comments:
April 21, 2020
I think I read yesterday a report that we've done more than everybody else, every other country combined. And I think our people should be getting a lot of credit for that. We've done a lot — more than everybody else combined — and you never hear that in the news. [Because it's not even close to being true.] It's, you know, unfortunate.

April 23, 2020
As you know, we've done more testing than every other nation combined, and that's a big statement. [And by statement, you mean lie.]

April 24, 2020
5.1 million tests. That's more than all countries combined. [Wrong.] All countries combined. [Still wrong.] 5.1 million tests.

April 30, 2020
We have more tests — we have given more tests — and the high-quality tests — than every other country combined. And I say it. The friend of mine, South Korea — President Moon — called me. ... He said, "What a job you've done on testing." So the testing and the masks and all of the things, we've solved every problem. We solved it quickly.

May 6, 2020
The media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn't have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad. ... We do many times — we've done more testing than every other country combined ... So we're going to have more cases because we do more testing. Otherwise, you don't know if you have a case. I think that's a correct statement.

May 11, 2020
And, you know, one thing I think is very important ... just to finish: we have now — and nobody says it; they just don't want to write it — by far, more tests than any other country in the world. Not even a contest. And the quality of our test is the best anywhere in the world. That's very important to say. ... We're testing more people per capita than South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland, and many other countries — and, in some cases, combined. [Trump cherry-picks six countries, but the US is beating only five of them in tests per capita. The UK is out-testing the UK per million.]

May 13, 2020
We just cracked 10 million tests ... Ten million. We set an all-time record, by far. [An all-time record during an unprecedented event?] If you look down here, these are other countries that have not done anywhere near what we're doing. We're double. If you add them up and double them, we've done more tests. But I can't get the press to print that, unfortunately. They just don't want to print it.
At the end of the day (May 18), the top five countries in total tests are:
                    TESTS     TESTS PER 1M
United States  12,300,744           37,188
Russia          7,147,014           48,977
Germany         3,147,771           37,584
Italy           3,041,365           50,294
Spain           3,037,840           64,977
As you can see, the #2-#3-#4 countries have combined for more tests than the US, and each of the other four have tested a greater percentage of their population than the US.

Of the 215 countries, territories, etc. listed at worldometers, there are test totals for 189 of them. I added up those numbers tonight and can tell you there have been 61,141,742 tests worldwide.
Total Tests:      61,141,742
United States:    12,300,744    (20.12%)
Other Countries:  48,840,998    (79.88%)
It's disturbing, but not surprising, to hear Trump describe the number of tests as a game in which his country is winning ("We set an all-time record"), but this particular lie is a whopper.

The US accounts for 1 out of every 5 tests worldwide, ranking 39th in Tests/1M Population.

The US ranks #1 (by far) with 91,981 deaths. (The UK is second with 34,796 deaths; only four other countries have more than 10,000.) The US accounts for 28.73% of the world's 320,189 COVID-19 deaths.

The United States is far closer to having more deaths than the rest of the world combined than it is completed tests.

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